Applicability, Reliability and Validity of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised in Offenders with Intellectual Disabilities: Some Initial Findings

Abstract

As a part of a larger study, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) was used to assess psychopathy in 203 individuals from three UK National Health Service settings for offenders with intellectual disabilities (ID): a high security hospital, a medium and low security hospital and a community based service. The PCL-R was rated from file review combined with a clinician interview. Internal consistency and inter-rater reliability were acceptable, and broadly comparable to that reported for other offender populations. The instrument was also associated in largely expected ways with level of security, and with measures of antisocial personality disorder, risk, and current behavioural functioning, providing some preliminary indications of convergent validity. However, further empirical investigation is required before the PCL-R can be used with confidence to make clinical and risk-based decisions in this population.