Psychopathy and the predictive validity of the PCL-R: An international perspective

Its controversial past notwithstanding, psychopathy has emerged as one of t he most important clinical constructs in the criminal justice and mental he alth systems. One reason for the surge in theoretical and applied interest in the disorder is the development and widespread adoption of reliable and valid methods for its measurement. The Hare PCL-R provides researchers and clinicians with a common metric for the assessment of psychopathy, and has led to a surge in replicable and meaningful findings relevant to the issue of risk for recidivism and violence, among other things. Most of the resear ch thus far has been based on North American samples of offenders and foren sic psychiatric patients. We summarize this research and compare it with fi ndings from several other countries, including England and Sweden. We concl ude that the ability of the PCL-R to predict recidivism, violence, and trea tment outcome has considerable cross-cultural generalizability, and that th e PCL-R and its derivatives play a major role in the understanding and pred iction of crime and violence. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.