Crime &Delinquency, Ahead of Print.
The purpose of this study was to determine whether criminal versatility predicts future recidivism. A Cox proportional-hazards survival analysis of 1,101 male inmates showed that criminal versatility predicted recidivism after controlling for age, race, education, violent instant offense, sentence length, prior substance abuse, general criminal thinking, age at first conviction, and number of prior convictions. A hazard ratio of 1.09 revealed that a one-point increase on an 11-point criminal versatility scale predicted a 9% increase in the probability of future recidivism. These results were confirmed in a binomial logistic regression controlling for time at risk in the community. This is one of the first studies to highlight the clinical significance of criminal versatility in establishing risk for future offending.