Psychopathie et risque de récidive sexuelle : analyse critique de la littérature scientifique

Abstract

ObjectivesFor the past twenty years, sexual violence is a major subject in the legal and criminological fields. Moreover, this phenomenon is becoming a major public health issue and becomes an important topic in termes of prevention. The main objective of this article is to clarify the current state of the litterature about the relationship between the psychopathy and the risk of sexual recidivism. Indeed, the relationship between both of them are debated among the studies right now. So, it's in this context that we wanted to expose the international studies on this topic and to discuss it. MethodsA review of literature was conducted from 1992 to 2017 from three databases: ScienceDirect, PsycInfo and PubMed. The selection process of the articles was carried out from the methodological recommendations of the « Preferred Reporting Items of Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses » grid (PRISMA). Thus, 24 articles identifying the relationship between psychopathy and risk of sexual recidivism, or psychopathy as a predictor of sexual recidivism were selected. These 24 articles include fields studies and meta-analyzes. The diversity of the methodologies used didn’t allow the realization of meta-analysis of the results of the studies. ResultsThe results show that psychopathy appears as a risk factor for sexual recidivism or in relationship with risk of sexual recidivism or sexual recidivism only for some of the studies. The other part of them nuance these results or show an absence of relationship between psychopathy and sexual recidivism. This can be explained by the presence of other risk factors, but especially by the diversity of the methodologies used by the studies. Effectively, we can observe that researches identified in this article include different populations, that the environment of people recruted is not the same, or that different population comparisons were realised between studies. We also observe that the nature of the studies isn’t the same: some of them are longitudinal studies, others retrospective studies. This doesn’t allow us to make the same conclusions. ConclusionsTo conclude, psychopathic personality seems important to take into account in the prevention of the risk of sexual recidivism, but doesn’t appear sufficient. Indeed, it's important to consider other life factors may represent risk factors such individual characteristics, environment of the people or the nature of offenses, for example. In this perspective, the review of the literature discussed in this article aims to provide clinicians with elements of thought in the prevention of sexual recidivism. Moreover, this review aims to provide additional knowledge in psychocriminology for clinical research.