ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of psychopathy and its measurement among offenders. It considers the historical conceptualisations of psychopathy and how these have influenced its assessment. The chapter deals with a review of new developments in the assessment of psychopathy and what these consider crucial in order to successfully capture the construct. For many clinicians working in forensic services, assessing for psychopathy has become routine practice when determining risk and treatment suitability. Emphasising the role of the deficits, Cleckley posited that psychopathy occurred along a continuum, with severe levels being associated with more difficulties, including antisocial behaviour. M. D. Cunningham and T. J. Reidy found psychopathy to be a better predictor of institutional violence, parole outcome, treatment failure, and violent recidivism than antisocial personality disorder. The psychopathy checklist-revised is commonly administered in settings where contact with antisocial individuals is likely, such as forensic psychiatric hospitals, probation, prisons, and community rehabilitation or reintegration programmes.
