The 50th anniversary issue of Criminal Justice and Behavior (Vol. 52, Issue 3, March 2025) has published a new study co-authored by Kristine M. Lovatt, Keira C. Stockdale, and Mark Olver that examines how protective factors, dynamic violence risk, and recidivism intersect with cases of juvenile psychopathy. Through a comparative analysis of different measuring tools and official records, the researchers looked at a diverse sample of Canadian justice-involved youth to see how psychopathic traits corresponded with criminal risk and recidivism. The study found that while juvenile psychopathy remained clinically relevant, the construct did not seem to be connected to a lack of protective factors or the inability to reduce risk through treatment.
Background
Psychopathy – also known as antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) – tends to manifest in youth through certain interpersonal and emotional behaviors that exceed developmental norms. While not all may be present in any one individual, these juvenile psychopathic traits include:
- Adeptness at impression management
- Deceitfulness
- Manipulative behaviors
- Egocentricity
- Grandiosity
- Callousness
- Cruelty towards others
- Lack of remorse or conscience for wrongdoing
- Difficulty experiencing normal range and intensity of emotions
- Recklessness
- Sensation-seeking behavior
- Easily bored and impulsive
- Limited forethought or consideration of consequences before acting
Juvenile psychopathy is often associated with patterns of behavior that result in frequent involvement with the justice system. The researchers’ intent with this study was to compare measurements of juvenile psychopathy against measurements for violence risk and protective factors experienced by the individual youths. By introducing a more multifaceted view of the data, the study would be able to determine if changes in risk factors or protective factors could influence the likelihood of criminal behavior or recidivism among individuals who had been assessed as exhibiting juvenile psychopathy.
“Protective factors are social, psychological, and environmental agents that mitigate risk for recidivism and should, in principle, promote positive outcomes.”
Methodology
The study used a retrospective file review format to conduct its data collection and analysis, examining records of 257 male and female Canadian youth from a court-adjudicated population between 2007 - 2012. Key demographic characteristics of the sample were as follows:
- Average Age:16.5 years old (range 12-20)
- Gender:76.7% male (197 people), 23.3% female (60 people)
- Ethnicity:75.3% Indigenous (174 people), 24.7% non-Indigenous (57 people)
- School History:242 attended; 233 suspended or expelled
Statistics of the 257 subjects’ offense history included:
- Nonviolent offenses only: 24.1%
- Sexual offenses: 13.2%
- Non-sexual violent offenses: 62.6%
- Prior convictions: 68.8%
- Prior violent offenses: 42.2%
Additionally, files revealed that 43.2% had received either individual or group forensic treatment, such as substance management or violence/sexual offense reduction programs.
Measurement Instruments
The study gathered data from psychological assessments, presentence reports, and treatment records, and analyzed the data through three specific assessment tools:
- Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL-YV)– This is a 20-item scale that assesses interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial traits, with each item scored from 0 (absent) to 2 (present).
- Violence Risk Scale: Youth Version (VRS-YV)– This measures historical and changeable violence risks to track changes occurring during treatment. The assessment consists of 4 historical items and 19 changeable items, rated on a scale from 0-3.
- Structured Assessment of Protective Factors: Youth Version (SAPROF-YV)– This 16-item scale measures resilience, motivational, relational, and external factors that are considered “protective” against the likelihood of criminal behavior, and each item is scored on a scale from 0-2.
The researchers also collected data on recidivism through official records obtained from the Canadian Police Information Center (CPIC). Incidents were categorized as:
- Violent recidivism (convictions involving harm, either threatened or inflicted)
- Nonviolent recidivism (convictions for property, drug, or other offenses)
Analyses
Data analysis was conducted with SPSS Statistics software to examine the intersections between measurements of psychopathy traits, protective factors, violence risk, and changes in recidivism related to gender and ethnicity. Analysis structures included:
- Comparisons of different groups of youth across demographics for psychopathy, protective factors, and risk level scores, including the size of the differences.
- Correlation analysis (positive and negative) between juvenile psychopathy, protective factors, and risk levels.
- Predictive analysis to determine if scores on any of the three measurement tools would show a likelihood of recidivism.
- Survival analysis of the amount of time between an individual’s release and when they committed another offense.
- An analysis of whether violence risk levels and protective factors could produce more accurate predictions of recidivism than high psychopathy trait scores on their own.
Key Findings and Interpretations
The data collected from the records produced several important findings:
- Psychopathy and Risk: Higher scores on the PCL:YV were associated with fewer protective factors such as school engagement and treatment motivation, as well as lower scores in resilience factors such as coping skills or emotional regulation. External protective factors such as professional support or court-mandated actions did not show significant difference between groups with higher PCL:YV scores and those with lower scores.
- Ethnic and Gender Diversity: In addition to gender information, the original sample had provided racial/ethnic data on approximately 90 percent of the individuals, with over three-fourths identified as having Indigenous ancestry due to self-reporting or legal indications and the remaining identified as White or other non-Indigenous. Indigenous youth in the sample showed higher levels of many psychopathy traits – especially within lifestyle and antisocial-coded traits – and greater violence risk but also lower protective factors than non-Indigenous youth. Female youth showed lower or approximately equivalent levels of psychopathy traits than males as well as lower levels of protective factors. Those female subjects with high PCL:YV scores also showed stronger correlation with violent recidivism. However, the researchers acknowledged that the relatively small sample size of female subjects in this study made it difficult to draw definitive conclusions.
- Risk Reduction: A higher level of protective factors such as positive social and educational environments seemed to mitigate the risk of offending, while psychological treatment programs – particularly those that were modeled after Risk-Need-Responsivity principles – were also effective in reducing recidivism among youth independent of their PCL:YV scores.
Conclusions
The results found in this study offered several actionable insights for working with justice-involved youth who showed psychopathy traits.
- Psychopathy is associated with greater criminal risk but it does not independently predict recidivism when other risk/protective factors are considered. Assessments of justice-involved youth should go beyond psychopathy scores and include dynamic risk factors and protective factors for a more comprehensive understanding.
- Treatment-related reductions in risk were the strongest predictor of lower recidivism. Since protective factors can play an important role in mitigating risk in high-psychopathy youth, these should be considered and incorporated into interventions for justice-involved individuals.
- Justice-involved Indigenous youth had higher psychopathy scores and risk factors but lower protective factors, which highlights the need for culturally specific interventions.
Youth that exhibit high psychopathy traits are sometimes referred to as “untreatable.” The findings in this study suggest otherwise, and that justice systems should focus on risk reduction and providing more robust protective factors rather than placing youths with juvenile psychopathy into a category by which they receive no clinical attention at all. Further research along additional intersectional lines is warranted to account for demographic and other limitations present in this study.
Source Article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00938548241307235
