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Psychopathy and Criminal Offenders

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Psychopathy as Unified Theory of Crime

Part of the book series: Palgrave's Frontiers in Criminology Theory ((FCRT))

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Abstract

The chapter examines the salience of psychopathy among various offender groups. The chapter explores how psychopathy accommodates the general overlap of antisocial behaviors among diverse populations. Probably the greatest strength of psychopathy is its predictive validity across a range of behavioral outcomes. It has tremendous generality and can be used as the unifying causal construct to explain the comorbidity of antisocial behaviors and broad forms of psychopathology. Psychopathy has shown empirical value in predicting antisocial outcomes among diverse populations and subpopulations selected from community, clinical, and correctional samples. The notion of noncriminal or successful psychopath is also reviewed and sharply critiqued.

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  1. Criminal Justice Studies, Iowa State University, Ames, USA

    Matt DeLisi

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DeLisi, M. (2016). Psychopathy and Criminal Offenders. In: Psychopathy as Unified Theory of Crime. Palgrave's Frontiers in Criminology Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46907-6_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46907-6_5

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