Quick look
A new book by criminologists Matt DeLisi and Matt Logan examines how changing attitudes and assumptions have influenced public thinking about crime, highlighting a gap between perception and research on chronic offending. This "criminal naïveté," they write, shapes debates on safety, accountability and criminal‑justice policy.
AMES, Iowa - Empathy is a central part of how people relate to one another, especially in moments of hardship. We extend it toward people in pain, people in crisis and people who have been wronged.
In their new book, "Criminal Naïveté," criminologists Matt DeLisi and Matt Logan explore how empathy also shapes the way Americans think about crime. This includes what DeLisi and Logan call "criminal naïveté" - a belief that offenders are primarily victims of circumstance, while the justice system, and even the public, are the chief sources of harm.
"This shift in thinking may feel compassionate and humane, but it can also pull us away from reality and create distortion," said DeLisi, a distinguished professor of sociology and criminal justice at Iowa State University.
"Pollyanna narratives about crime, criminals and the criminal justice system are often misguided, and while our good intentions are appreciated, they can't take the place of real evidence and what research shows about people who repeatedly offend," he said.
While most Americans have little to no involvement in crime, DeLisi said approximately 10% of the nation's population - nearly 35 million people - can be classified as chronic offenders. Researchers define chronic offenders as individuals who display persistent, frequent and often versatile criminal behavior throughout their lives. Their conduct problems typically begin in childhood, DeLisi noted.
"Although chronic offenders comprise just 10% of the population, they are responsible for more than 50% of all reported crimes in the U.S. and an even larger share of violent felonies," DeLisi said. "Most people who live normatively behaved lives never encounter chronic offenders directly, which leaves them with an incomplete - and often inaccurate - understanding of these individuals are."
Logan, an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University, said research and polling consistently reveal a significant gap between how the public thinks repeat offending works and what justice‑system data shows - "a divide that's driven less by evidence and more by media habits and intuitive biases that shape people's impressions of crime," he added.
DeLisi and Logan said this same pattern appears in public debates or reforms that do not consider what researchers know about the most habitual offenders.
"For example, pretrial reforms that abolish cash bail and permit broad release may be reasonable for low‑risk, first‑time defendants, but at the same time can pose a very different set of risks when applied to chronic offenders," DeLisi said, noting that defendants with prior criminal histories have been shown to be significantly more likely to be rearrested pretrial than those with no previous record.
This distinction can get lost in broad policy discussions, DeLisi and Logan said, and raises deeper questions about empathy and how far its extensions reach.
"Of course, empathy is essential and a marker of healthy, prosocial behavior," Logan said. "However, when empathy becomes automatic, we start losing sight of risk and risk levels. And when that awareness disappears, victims disappear as a concern, too."
How crime gets misunderstood
DeLisi and Logan argue criminal naïveté didn't appear overnight, but grew gradually from everyday assumptions most people don't realize they're making.
One of the most influential, they said, is distance.
Because most Americans have little direct exposure to individuals with long‑term antisocial behavior, that separation can lead to "pathology blindness," or the tendency to see chronic offenders as fundamentally similar to the general public, they said.
"When people haven't seen certain behaviors up close, they may fill in the gaps with assumptions that are far from reality," DeLisi said.
This lack of exposure also impacts how Americans understand the criminal justice system, DeLisi and Logan said.
"While people often have strong opinions about police, courts and prisons, they usually don't have significant firsthand experience in these areas, and this inexperience can lead them to imagine how those institutions work - especially around rehabilitation - in ways that don't always match reality," DeLisi said.
DeLisi and Logan noted that while serious offenders often have access to a range of rehabilitative programs, the benefits tend to be modest and short-lived.
"The degree of access and durability of benefits vary by program type, risk level and implementation quality, but overall, research shows that gains are usually limited to the intervention itself and then quickly wear off once the program ends," DeLisi said.
The Great Inversion
In the book, DeLisi and Logan discuss how these forces have contributed to the Great Inversion in criminal justice. This established term refers to a shift in criminal-justice thinking in which explanations rooted in offenders' personal choices or risk factors are replaced by arguments that systems and institutions shape behavior and bear most of the responsibility for crime.
They said the inversion appears in policy decisions that prioritize offender comfort over community safety, public narratives that frame accountability as cruelty, early‑release choices that lead to predictable reoffending, and debates where victims and communities are relegated to the background while attention centers on the circumstances of the offender.
DeLisi and Logan stressed that fairness is essential, but must be bidirectional, extending not only to the person facing sanction but also to the people who may be harmed if risk is underestimated.
"If we forget them, we're not balancing justice," DeLisi said. "We're tilting it."
Why it matters - and a call for balance
Can criminal naïveté be overcome?
DeLisi and Logan argue yes - but only when the public and policymakers consider the behavioral realities that criminal naïveté tends to obscure. The criminal justice system's four sentencing pillars - deterrence, incapacitation, retribution and rehabilitation - are most effective when applied with compassion and a clear understanding of risk, the co-authors said.
"Compassion without clarity spells disaster," Logan said. "And real compassion, the kind that protects people from being hurt, requires us to engage with sometimes difficult truths about human behavior."
DeLisi said the concept of criminal naïveté matters because crime policy affects everyone, not just offenders or victims.
"The public wants honesty and safety," he said. "But we can't get either if we keep telling ourselves stories that feel good but aren't true."
