Performance of male psychopaths following conditional release from prison.

Abstract

The Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) was administered to 231 White male criminals prior to thenrelease from prison on parole or mandatory supervision. Official parole supervision files provided details of each criminal's behavior during his supervised release. The PCL made a significant contribution to the prediction of outcome beyond that made by several key criminal-history and demographic variables. The percentage of criminals with low, medium, and high PCL scores who violated the conditions of release was 23.5,48.9, and 65.2, respectively. The probability of remaining out of prison for at least 1 year was .80, .54, and .38 for low, medium, and high groups, respectively. The high group members received more suspensions and presented more supervisory problems than did those in the other groups. The results provide support for the validity of the PCL and for the view that it is possible to make useful predictions about some aspects of the criminal psychopath's behavior. Psychological tests have not been of much practical use inpredicting the behavior of criminals (see review by Carbonell, Megargee, & Moorhead, 1984), and psychiatric diagnoses have not fared much better. Thus, Guze (1976) concluded that once a person has been convicted of a felony, psychiatric diagnosis plays only a limited role in predicting criminal activities. This conclusion may be overly pessimistic, at least with respect to psychopathy. Most clinical descriptions of psychopaths make reference to their persistent disregard for social norms and conventions; their impulsivity, unreliability, and irresponsibility; their lack of empathy, remorse, and emotional depth; and their failure to maintain enduring attachments to people, principles, or goals (Cleckley, 1976;McCord&McCord, 1964). Moreover, there is already good evidence of strong associations between

Nipping psychopathy in the bud: an examination of the convergent, predictive, and theoretical utility of the PCL‐YV among adolescent girls

“…The strong relationships that have been documented between violence and psychopathy among adults (Hare, 1991;Hemphill, Hart, & Hare, 1994;Hart, Kropp, & Hare, 1988) have caused researchers to question whether psychopathy, or psychopathic traits, may offer the same lens into understanding and predicting violence among adolescents. Among adults, psychopathy has been defined as a personality disorder that is characterized by three or more clusters of traits, including an arrogant and deceitful interpersonal style, deficient affective experience, and impulsive and/or antisocial behavioural features (Hare, 1991).…”

Diagnostic validity of antisocial personality disorder: A prototypical analysis.

“…The PCL and a subsequen revision (PCL-R) have good psychometric properties (see Hare, 1985a;Harper Hakstian, & Hare, 1988;Schroeder, Schroeder, & Hare, 1983) that include interrater reliability (r = .89), internal consistency (a = .90), and correlation with a criterion-based measure (r = .80). In addition, scores on the PCL demonstrated expected differences in the management of correctional inmates (Hare & McPher son, 1984) and predictive validity for both recidivism (Hart, Kropp, & Hare, 1988 and treatment response (Ogloff, Wong, & Greenwood, 1990). Most recently, the PCL-CV (Hare, Cox, & Hart, 1989) was developed and is expected to be a catalyst for further modifications of APD in DSM-IV .…”

Development of Psychopathy from Childhood

“…First, the strong associations between psychopathy factors and antisocial behavior and violence in the adult literature have prompted interest in whether conduct problems, aggression, and violence in some youth might be explained by similar personality correlates [9]. Second, Lynam has proposed that, to prevent the serious negative outcomes associated with psychopathy, the early identiication of psychopathic traits is essential because (a) atempts to treat psychopathy in adulthood have proven to be quite unsuccessful [10,11]; and (b) evidence suggests that psychopathic individuals have antisocial and criminal histories that begin prior to adulthood [8].…”