ABSTRACT
Over the past few decades, the construct of psychopathy has often been operationalized in research and clinical contexts using the family of Psychopathy Checklist (PCL) instruments, including the Psychopathy Checklist, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version, and Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version. A well-developed body of research suggests that PCL-measured psychopathy is related to several outcomes that are of interest to researchers, forensic clinicians, attorneys, and courts. After describing the development and psychometric properties of the PCL measures, this chapter provides a comprehensive review of the ability of PCL measures to predict antisocial behavior, including community recidivism and institutional misconduct. We draw four conclusions regarding the relationship between the PCL measures and violence risk: (1) the interrater reliability of the PCL-R in real-world adversarial contexts that call for recidivism/violence risk assessments is troublingly poor; (2) the PCL’s predictive validity depends on the outcome being predicted and the characteristics of the sample; (3) there is mixed evidence regarding the incremental validity of the PCL measures in predicting violence; and (4) violence risk assessments should not rely exclusively on the results of the PCL, although the PCL can be used as part of a more comprehensive risk assessment battery.
