Forensic Psychology Exam 3 (Part 2)

Hare"s Psychopath Checklist

Scores >30= "psychopath"

~20-25% of prisoners are "psychopaths" (more than half are diagnosed with APD)

Two factor model

(factoring: taking a while bunch of items and running to see which are more similar to each other, grouping items together that tend to go together because people rate the similarity)

Two Factor Model (2)

-Personality (Interpersonal/Affective Features)

-Behavioral/Lifestyle Features (criminal- APD is more heavily waiting on this feature)

More recent 3- and 4-facet models

David Cook, did a factor asset and said the most important were the interpersonal, affective, and behavioral (3-facet) and throw out anti social

Interpersonal features

(used car-salesmen: superficially likable & self important, but underneath won't want to leave alone with kid, dog, etc.)

-Glib/Superficial Charm

-Grandiose Self-Worth

-Pathological lying

-Conning/ Manipulative

Affective

-Lack remorse

-Shallow affect

-Lacks empathy

-failure to accept responsibility

Lifestyle

-Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom

-Parasitic lifestyle

-Impulsive

-Lack of life goals

-Irresponsibility

Antisocial

(shouldn't really be included in a personality test- people who aren't psychopathic do these behaviors; inclusion doesn't make much sense; one reason why this is included because Hare worked in prison setting)

Antisocial features

-Poor Behavioral Controls

-Early Behavior Problems

-Juvenile Delinquency

-Revocation of Conditional Release

-Criminal Versatility

PCL-R Scores predict various socially troubling behavior

-History of violent and non-violent crimes

-Future violent/non-violent crime (higher score much more likely to engage in future criminal behavior)

-treatment response (more psychopathic, not interested in treatment, more prone to drop out)

Psychopaths commit ___ times the number of violent crimes as do non-psychopathic criminals

2

Types of violence

Predatory vs. reactive

Psychopaths are more likely to be incarcerated for ______ violence committed AGAINST A STRANGER

predatory

___-____ is psychopathic were more likely to commit another violent crime; but still less than 1/2 of them committing another crime

31-40

Judges, etc. thought people

who were psychopathic were sent to treatment and controlled group was normal offenders.

Scores PCL-R's on all and found out

psychopathics were not psychopathic and normal offenders were psyhcopathic

People who got low scores were

less likely to come back than people

Psychopathy Among Women

"Gone Girl", "Monster", "Girl Interrupted", "To Die For"

PCL-R

The Psychopathy Checklist (Revised) Hare.

Prevalence of (psychopathy among women)

-Somewhat mixed results

-Bigger disparities in community samples

Male/Female mean scores tend to be...

-in corrections

-still trend toward lower scores among women

-might be due to PCLR gender bias

Predictive Validity (does knowing a woman is psychopathic a lot more dangerous than not knowing)

-weak and mostly non-significant effects for female delinquents (split all women and all men)

-effect sizes are larger in samples in with higher proportions of women

-greater confidence when using it to predict risk among women than men.

Is psychopathy a 'real thing'?

Yes. (people who do get higher scores are more likely to commit future criminal acts than people who can lower scores).

Knowing a criminal's PCL-R score may tell us

something important about them and what they "may" do in the future.

(THESE SCORES ARE USED TO IMPACT-DECISION MAKING IN COURT)

Uncritical Acceptance of PCL-R within the Forensic MH Field

-"Unparalleled as a measure for making risk assessments"

-"Single most important clinical construct in the criminal justice system"

-"Failure to consider psychopathy when conducting a risk assessment may be unreasonable (from legal perspective) or unethical (from professional perspective"

Legal Ramifications/Implications of being labeled a Psychopath

-Increased sentence length

-Indefinite commitment (Canada-let you out when you are no longer dangerous, TX-requires a test)

-Denial of treatment

-Being moved from juvenile to adult court

-Execution

Psychopathy evidence appears

to be widely used to influence legal decision-makers (As PCL-R is commercialized more, start incorporating the PCL-R in more cases)

Texas v. Swift

It appears to me that we are dealing with is a psychopath who is attempting to exaggerate psychopathology

Tommy Lynn Sells- Individuals with APD have...

"no regard for life or for anything" and that "blood is an important part of the ritual for some psychopaths"

Tommy Lynn Sells

was "off the charts on Hare scale" (can't be off the charts- can only get to 40)

If the PCL-R were like music, the developer would be...

like the Beatles or George Jones

PCL-R is being used in...

sexually violent predators (64%) and future dangerousness, and is being introduced in parole decision (24%) and rare in mental state, sentencing

PCL-R is rarely...

introduced in sentencing decisions the jury has to make

DeMatteo

-348 civil and criminal cases

-somewhat above-average scores relative to PCL-R 'norms' 25 more psychopathic than the people in prison

-PRIMARILY INTRODUCED BY EXPERTS RETAILED BY THE PROSECUTION (PROSECUTION TOOL)

-Prosecution-retained experts provided higher scores than defense-retained experts

DeMatteo Uses...

-Predominantly risk assessment (how dangerous) EXTREMELY HIGH RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PCL-R LEVELS AND PERCEIVED LEVELS OF RISK

-"Behavioral abnormality" in SVP cases (about to release, convicted of sex offenses and can't keep you anymore, civily commit to a program b/c they think dangerous and have a mental disorder)

Admissibility of PCL-R evidence?

-Rarely challenged; rarely excluded

-Little consideration of prejudicial impact.