The Promise and Pitfalls of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised in Sexual Offense Evaluations

ABSTRACT

Psychopathy is a serious personality disorder often implicated in criminal behavior, including sexual offenses. The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) is the most frequently used assessment tool for measuring psychopathy, often utilized by experts in assessments of people charged or convicted of sexual offenses. Despite its widespread use in this context, there are important questions about its suitability, given extant research on sexual recidivism and existing legal precedent. We provide an extensive overview of evolving legal precedent involving psychopathy and sexual offenses, with an emphasis on civil commitment and the limitations of using diagnoses involving antisocial behaviors.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual offenses
• psychopathy
• recidivism
• assessment
• civil commitment
• ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.