ABSTRACT

The current chapter elucidates psychopathy among juvenile justice-involved youth by reviewing the extant research and conducting an empirical analysis on the relevance of psychopathic trait indicators among a sample of over 64,000 juvenile offending criminal careers in Florida. Self-reported SVC career criminality was predicted by affective and personality psychopathic traits. Psychopathic traits were significantly associated with juvenile justice system involvement, including early onset, violent offending, long-term residential placement, total number of arrests, and SVC juvenile offending criminal careers. In other words, the lifestyle, personality, and offense behavior of the most serious juvenile delinquents are saturated with psychopathy.