The relationship between psychopathy facets and types of criminal offences

Abstract

The Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R) is a widely used measurement of psychopathy comprising interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial facets representing narrow-band characteristics associated with the construct. However, there is little research on whether the distinct facets of psychopathy show specialised relationships with different types of criminal offences. The PCL-R was administered to 138 adults incarcerated at a county jail. Arrests were coded into broad categories (i.e., crimes against persons, property or society), as well as for specific offence types (e.g. burglary, assault) using US crime definitions. Zero-order correlations and zero-inflated regression models showed significant relationships between: the lifestyle facet and property and societal crimes, mainly drug offences; the affective facet and crimes against persons; and the antisocial facet with all three major crime categories, as well as burglary, motor vehicle theft, robbery and assault. Overall, these results indicate that the PCL-R facets offer unique information about specific forms of criminal behaviour.