Forensic Psychology: To What Extent Do Personality Disorders Explain Criminal Behaviour?

• Forensic psychology: To what extent do personality disorders explain criminal behaviour?

This essay will look at the extent that personality disorders explain criminal behaviour. The essay will firstly start with how personality disorders and psychopathy are discovered in people. The most popular test is the PCL-R, it is a diagnostic tool used to rate a person’s psychopathic or antisocial tendencies. It consists of a twenty-one item rating scale that only works when a qualified examiner compares a person’s level of psychopathy with that or a ‘prototypical psychopath’. This method is used worldwide and although these traits are linked to a socially deviant lifestyle, even though it is not true for all. It does place these people at a much

Narcissistic personality disorders tend to be present in almost every violent crime, one narcissistic personality disorder is psychopathy, some of the statistics linked to psychopathy do back up the question that having that personality disorder could be the reason for committing the violent crime. (Robert Hare 1993) stated and ‘estimated that psychopaths may constitute 1% of the general population’. However, they are responsible for more than 50% of serious crimes committed (p.87) and among men committing serial sexual murders 90% are psychopaths.

It stressed that essentially any personality disorder can be linked to a serious crime with the sole exception of avoidance personality disorder. The authors method was to conduct interviews with people convicted of serious crimes whom had been diagnosed with a personality disorder by a forensic psychologist at the time of the conviction. The author found that the main disorders tended to be antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy, sadistic personality disorder and paranoid personality disorder. The authors findings about the development of the personality disorders came from childhood experiences of the people convicted and certain experiences in adult life. Findings showed that aside from narcissistic personality types which are represented in almost all violent crimes, antisocial, psychopathic, sadistic and paranoid are also incredibly common in this realm of crime. This shows that the personality disorders can be a cause of or a contributing factor to the criminal behaviour. (Robert Hare 1993) ‘estimated that psychopaths may constitute 1% of the general population’ however they are responsible for more than 50% of serious crimes committed (p.87). Per this article among men committing serial sexual murders 90% are psychopaths.