Identifying Psychopathy?
Many used to believe that almost all crimes were explainable by environmental and social factors such as maltreatment during childhood, poor neighborhood and much more. However, there seems to be a shift of thought after the term “psychopathy” has become more concrete during the past few decades and now it is widely believed that criminals are just born with a dark personality. This change in thought has been widely due to the work of a Canadian psychologist Robert Hare who collaborated with his research assistants and created the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised also known as PCL-R. Here I would like to shortly introduce and describe what PCL-R looks like and what impact it has in the realm of research and the justice system.
Firstly, Hare and his research assistants wrote down traits that are usually observable in psychopaths such as lack of remorse and empathy. The test lists 20 traits and the psychologists using this test are to identify whether these traits are present in their subjects by asking them questions and give them a rate of 0, 1 or 2; the highest point meaning that the trait is visible. Hence, 40 would be the highest score one could get on this test and any score above 30 means that the subject is strongly likely to show personality traits of those of a psychopath.
Hare wanted to make sure that the test that he had developed with his colleagues would be scientifically reliable and this was ascertained by the fact that any two people using the test on the same person would highly agree in their opinions; the inter-rater reliability is high for the PCL-R. This test initiated an astonishing number of researches in the subject of psychopathy.
However, many including Hare himself is against the use of the PCL-R in the justice system. One of the reasons is actually because of the low inter-rater reliability and this is contradictory to what I've said before. What this implies is that the PCL-R surely has a high inter-rater reliability in the research area but this doesn't apply the same in the justice system. Two psychologists, one hired by the prosecution and the other by the defense indicate an overall eight point difference in scores. Those hired by the prosecution persistently rated higher scores and the reason to this difference is quite obvious.
The PCL-R test has been used in the justice system to decide on problems such as the type of sentence an offender should receive and whether a prisoner should be released on a parole. However, this step should be taken with caution as we are aware that it might potentially deny of a parole to a man who has transformed but also give a parole to a man who is likely to harm the society again. The test should, at least for now, be used only in the research area where it is highly reliable and has a significant impact.
References
http://www.npr.org/2011/05/26/136619689/can-a-test-really-tell-whos-a-psychopath
http://cfs11.tistory.com/image/32/tistory/2009/02/05/05/41/4989fd8d7edc7
