Short- and long-term recidivism prediction of the PCL-R and the effects of age: a 24-year follow-up.

Abstract

We prospectively examined the short- and long-term prediction of several recidivism outcomes as a function of psychopathy and age in a sample of 273 Canadian federal inmates with an average 24 years post-release follow-up. Offenders were rated using the original 22-item Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL: Hare, 1980) based on extensive archival file information, and the ratings were used to compute the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (Hare, 2003) and the 4 facet scores. PCL-R total scores and the Lifestyle and Antisocial facets, but not the Interpersonal and Affective facets, showed mostly small and some moderate predictive efficacy for general and nonviolent recidivism over 3-, 5-, 10-, and 20-year fixed follow-ups, and predicted violence recidivism at shorter follow-ups. Age at release was negatively correlated with all recidivism outcomes and follow-up periods for both high and low PCL-R rated offenders, and uniquely predicted all recidivism outcomes after controlling for the PCL-R using Cox regression survival analysis. Increased age was consistently linked to recidivism reduction even for psychopathic offenders. The results showed that both PCL-R scores and age contributed to the prediction of recidivism; however, the PCL-R facets made differential contributions that varied with the type of offense (violent vs. nonviolent) and follow-up time (shorter vs. longer). The results have implications for both risk assessment using the PCL-R and potentially for risk reduction interventions.