Personal values of lawbreakers

Understanding what makes lawbreakers do what they do is an issue of major societal concern. This paper studies how personal values are related to lawbreaking behavior. Data (N = 2930) from representative surveys on crime prevention in two German cities are used in this study. Personal values are measured by the individual reflexive values scale and coded in terms of Schwartz's theory of universals in values. Lawbreaking behavior is assessed by asking the respondents to report the frequency of having committed various offenses such as fare dodging or burglary. It is found that the higher respondents score on the seriousness, the frequency, or the recency of lawbreaking behavior, the more they value stimulation and hedonism, and the less they feel guided by tradition, conformity, and peace of mind. Other personal values show small or non-systematic effects. The various lawbreaking sub-groups are highly similar in the way they structure personal values (as seen in multidimensional scaling). However, there is a tendency for lawbreakers to simplify the cognitive map of personal values by a stronger clustering of the values' components.