Abstract
This study examined the ability of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) to reliably differentiate between men with and without histories of child molestation crimes at a maximum-security state hospital forensic mental health unit. Results showed that as hypothesized, molesters (n = 28) were less likely than non-sex offenders (n = 35) to exhibit thinking errors captured by the Cutoff, Entitlement, and to a lesser extent, the Cognitive Indolence, Discontinuity, and Power Orientation scales of the PICTS. The findings support its use in targeting general criminal thinking errors for treatment in mixed-offender populations, as well as its use in sex offender populations to augment other sex offense cognitive distortion measures when designing treatment.