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Born Bad or Made Bad?

Lecture notes

Recidivism

  • Reoffending after original offence

  • Only a small percentage of people commit the largest percentage of crime

  • Reoffending after non-custodial sentence much higher in juveniles vs adults (~20% vs ~45%)

  • Reoffending after incarceration is much higher in general ( 40% for adults and around 65% for juveniles)

  • Victorian Sentencing advisory council - Across 2017-18 percentage of prisoners released who returned to prison within two years lowest in SA and highest in NT, NSW is second with around 50%, national aerage is around 46%

Risk assessment

  • Involves attempting to identify the probability that an individual will engage in future criminal behaviour

  • Risk vs dangerousness:

    • Risk - Predicting likelihood of occurrence

    • Dangerousness - Predicting likely consequences of offending - how “serious” the crime is

Dangerousness

High

Low

High

Mass murder

Homicide

Low

Repeated drug possession

Drug possession

Psychopathy

  • A series of socials undesirable affective, interpersonal, and behavioural characteristics

  • It is NOT a disorder, it is a personality trait

  • Labelling can be stigmatising

  • Distinct from anti-social personality disorder

Psychopathy and violent crime

  • Individuals with psychopathy commit a disproportionately high number of criminal offences 

  • Hare and McPherson (1984):

    • Individuals with psychopathy had more criminal charges overall, and more criminal charges for violent crimes (e.g., robbery, assault) then individuals without psychopathy 

  • Harris, Rice and Cormier (1991):

    • Individuals with psychopathy were also more likely to reoffend than those without psychopathy 

Assessment of psychopathy 

  • The Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R) developed by Robert Hare (1984, 1991) 

  • Used worldwide as an assessment tool to identify offenders likely to reoffend violently (as defined by psychopathy) 

  • PCL - R 

    • 20 item scale separated in to two dimensions (Emotional/interpersonal and Social Deviance)

    • Assessors will go over the case information of the individual (life history crime history etc) and then will engage in a semi-structured interview with the individual 

    • After interview assessor will rate individual on the factors scoring 0, 1, or 2 for each (range 0 to 40) 

    • Score of 30+ indicates psychopathy 

    • Average non-psychopath scores about a 6 or 7 

    • First factor is related to primary psychopathy and second to secondary psychopathy 

Development of psychopathy 

  • Reserved to adult populations but certain personality traits and diagnoses in childhood can increase likelihood of possessing high levels of psychopathy 

    • Callous-Unemotional traits 

    • Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) 

    • Conduct Disorder 

Summary 

  • Recidivism rates are high, suggesting a national problem 

  • Psychopathy is an aspect of personality consisting of undesirable affective, interpersonal, and behavioural characteristics 

  • Individuals with psychopathy may be at heightened risk of criminal offending 

  • Psychopathy is not to be confused with antisocial personality disorder, or other diagnoses with antisociality 

When is your child a psychopath - reading notes

  • Researchers believe that nearly 1% of children exhibit callous and unemotional traits, about as many as have autism or bipolar disorder

  • More than 50 studies have found that kids with callous and unemotional traits are more likely to become criminals or display aggressive, psychopathic traits later in life

  • While adult psychopaths only make up a small amount of the population studies suggest that they commit half of all violent crimes

  • Researchers at King’s College London tested more than 200 five-week-old babies tracking whether they preferred looking at a person’s face or at a red ball, those who favoured the ball displayed more callous traits two and a half years later

  • Psychopathic brains have neural abnormalities

    • The limbic system, the set of brain structures involved in processing emotions, contains less grey matter - a psychopath may understand intellectually that what they’re doing is wrong but they don’t feel it

    • Experts point specifically to the amygdala, someone with an undersize or under active amygdala may not be able to feel empathy or refrain from violence

    • They also have an overactive reward system especially primed for drugs, sex, or anything else that delivers a ping of excitement.

  • The best physiological indicator of which young people will become criminals as adults is a low resting heart rate - Adrian Raine, University of Pennsylvania