PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

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PSYCHOLOGY AND CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR

• Conduct disroders
• ODD
• CD
• ASPD

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Conduct Problems

• Age-inappropriate actions and attitudes that
  violate family expectations, societal norms, or
  property rights of others
• Several different types and pathways
• Often associated with extremely unfortunate
  family and neighborhood circumstances

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Context of Antisocial Behavior

• Antisocial acts relatively normal among
  children
• Range of severity, from minor disobedience to
  fighting
• Most antisocial behaviors decline during normal
  development, with the exception of aggression
• More common in boys in childhood, but relatively
  equal by adolescence

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Social and Economic Costs of Conduct Problems

• Antisocial behavior is the most costly mental
  health problem
• An early, persistent, and extreme pattern of
  antisocial behavior occurs in about 5 of
  children, and these children account for over
  half of all crime and about 1/3 of clinic
  referrals

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Legal Perspectives

• Conduct problems defined as delinquent or
  criminal acts resulting in apprehension and court
  contact
• Minimum age of responsibility is 12 -14-16
• Only a subgroup of children meeting legal
  definitions also meet definition of a mental
  disorder

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Psychological Perspectives

• Conduct problems seen as falling on a continuous
  dimension of externalizing behavior
• Externalizing behavior seen as consisting of
  several related but independent sub-dimensions
• delinquent-aggressive
• overt-covert
• destructive-nondestructive

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Psychological Perspectives (cont.)

• Four categories of conduct problems

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Psychiatric Perspectives

• Conduct problems viewed as distinct mental
  disorders based on DSM symptoms
• In the DSM-IV, conduct problems fall under the
  category of disruptive behavior disorders, and
  include oppositional defiant disorder and conduct
  disorder

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Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)

• Age-inappropriate stubborn, irritable, and
  defiant behavior, including
• losing temper
• arguing with adults
• active defiance or refusal to comply
• deliberately annoying others
• blaming others for mistakes or misbehavior
• being touchy or easily annoyed
• anger and resentfulness
• spitefulness or vindictiveness

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Conduct Disorder (CD)

• A repetitive and persistent pattern of violating
  basic rights of others and/or age-appropriate
  societal norms or rules, including
• aggression to people and animals such as
  bullying, threatening, fighting, physical
  cruelty, using a weapon
• destruction of property, including deliberate
  fire setting
• deceitfulness or theft, including conning
  others, forgery, shoplifting, breaking into
  others property
• serious violations of rules, such as running
  away, truancy, staying out at night without
  permission

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Conduct Disorder (cont.)

• Childhood versus adolescent onset CD
• Children with childhood onset CD
• display at least one symptom before age 10
• more likely to be boys
• are aggressive
• account for a disproportionate amount of legal
  activity
• persist in antisocial behavior over time

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Conduct Disorder (cont.)

• Children with adolescent onset CD
• as likely to be girls as boys
• do not show the severity or psychopathology of
  the early-onset group
• less likely to commit violent offenses or persist
  as they get older

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Conduct Disorder (cont.)

• CD and Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD)
• as many as 40 of children with CD later develop
  Antisocial Personality Disorder - a pervasive
  pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the
  rights of others, as well as engagement in
  multiple illegal acts

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Associated Characteristics

• Cognitive and verbal deficits
• normal IQ, but generally 8 points lower than
  peers
• deficits present before conduct problems
• deficits in executive functioning
• School and learning problems
• underachievement, especially in language and
  reading
• relationship often best accounted for by presence
  of ADHD

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The School -

• Academic performance and delinquency
• The general path towards occupational prestige is
  education, and when youth are deprived of this
  avenue of success through poor school performance
  there is a greater likelihood of delinquent
  behaviour (Singer and Jou, 1992)
• Poor academic performance has been directly
  linked to delinquent behaviour
• School failure is stronger predictor of
  delinquency than personal variables
• School failure commonly found among chronic
  offenders (Farrington and West, 1988)
• Supported by studies of prison inmates

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Causes of school failure

• Social class
• Streaming
• Alienation of students from the school experience
  lack of attachment
• Irrelevant curriculum
• Labeling within the school system
• Negative interaction with teachers and school
  officials

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Associated Characteristics

• Inflated and unstable self-esteem
• Peer problems
• verbal and physical aggression toward peers, may
  become bullies
• often rejected as they get older
• involvement with other antisocial peers
• underestimate own aggression, overestimate
  others aggression
• often a lack of concern for others

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Older peers

• The people I hang around with used to like me
  because I was good at stealing. Because I was
  young nobody would suspect me and then I would
  get away with it. They liked to have me stay with
  them and I liked to be with them because I felt
  good.
• Co offending declines steadily from age 10
  (Reiss and Farrington, (9991)
• Delinquent friends are likely to have most
  influence when they have high status within the
  peer group and are popular

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Associated Characteristics

• Health-Related Problems
• rates of premature death 3-4 times higher
• higher risk of personal injury and illness
• early onset of sexual activity, higher
  sex-related risks
• substance abuse, higher risk of overdose
• Co-morbid Disorders
• ADHD
• Depression anxiety

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Prevalence Gender Differences

• Prevalence
• 2-6 for CD 12 for ODD
• Gender differences
• in childhood, antisocial behavior 3-4 times more
  common in boys
• differences decrease/disappear by age 15, due to
  increase in covert non-aggressive antisocial acts
  in girls
• for girls, lifetime prevalence for severe conduct
  problems about 3

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Developmental Course

• Earliest sign usually difficult temperament in
  infancy
• Two Pathways
• Life-course-persistent (LCP) path begin at an
  early age and persists into adulthood
• Adolescent-limited (AL) path begins around
  puberty and ends in young adulthood (more common
  and less serious than LCP)
• Often negative adult outcomes, especially for
  those on the LCP path

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Developmental Course (cont.)

• Approximate ordering of the different forms of
  disruptive and antisocial behavior from childhood
  through adolescence

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Causes of Conduct Problems

• Genetic Influences
• difficult early temperament or impulsivity may
  predispose certain children
• adoption and twin studies support genetic
  contribution, especially for overt behaviors
• reward dominance has been linked to a possible
  genetic deviation
• some children may have reward deficiency
  syndrome, which has been linked to a variant
  form of the dopamine D2 receptor gene

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Causes of Conduct Problems

• Neurobiological factors
• overactive behavioral activation system (BAS) and
  underactive behavioral inhibition system
• low psychophysiological and/or cortical arousal,
  and autonomic reactivity- may lead to diminished
  avoidance learning
• higher rates of neurodevelopmental risk factors
• childhood exposure to lead
• neuropsychological deficits

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Causes of Conduct Problems

• Social-Cognitive Factors
• egocentrism and lack of perspective taking
• inability to use verbal mediators to regulate
  behavior
• hostile attributions to ambiguous stimuli
• deficits in stages of social information-processin
  g

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Causes of Conduct Problems

• Family Contributions
• Coercion Theory- through an escape-conditioning
  sequence the child learns to use increasingly
  intense forms of noxious behavior to avoid
  unwanted parental demands
• insecure parent-child attachments
• family instability and stress
• parental criminality
• parental psychopathology

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Causes of Conduct Problems

• Societal Influences
• more common in neighborhoods with criminal
  subcultures, frequent transitions, low social
  support among neighbors
• established correlation between media violence
  and antisocial behavior
• Cultural Factors
• associated with minority status, but this is
  likely due to low SES

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Treatment

• Generally, few effective interventions
• Interventions with some empirical support
• Parent-Management Training (PMT)
• Cognitive problem solving skills training (PSST)
• Multisystemic treatment (MST)
• Mixed findings regarding the effectiveness of
  medications- may be useful to reduce overt
  behaviors, must be used in combination with other
  interventions

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Personality Disorders

• Personality Disorders refer to long-standing,
  pervasive and inflexible patterns of behavior
• Depart from cultural expectations
• Impair social and occupational functioning
• Cause emotional distress
• Paranoid, Schizoid, Antisocial, Borderline,
  Narcissistic, Histrionic, Avoidant, Dependent

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Antisocial Personality

• Shows a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and
  violation of other peoples rights.
• Up to 3.5 manifest an antisocial personality
  disorder (APA, 1994)
• Symptoms Repeatedly deceitful, irresponsible
  with money, impulsive, tendency to start fights,
  egocentric, no regard for safety of self or
  others.

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Dramatic/Erratic Cluster

• Antisocial personality disorder (PD) involves
• The presence of conduct disorder before the age
  of fifteen
• Conduct disorder includes truancy, lying, theft,
  arson, running away from home and destruction of
  property
• The continuation of these behaviors into
  adulthood
• Prevalence of antisocial PD is about 3 of men
  and 1 of women

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Antisocial Personality

• Tend to be skillful at manipulating people.
• Are not distressed by the pain they cause, often
  perceived as lacking any moral conscience.
• They glibly rationalize their actions by
  characterizing their victims as weak and
  deserving of being conned or stolen from (Comer,
  1997)

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Criteria and features of ASPD

• A. Pattern of disregard for and violation of the
  rights of others occurring since age 15 as
  indicated by 3 or more
• (1) failure to conform to social norms
• (2) repeated lying/conning
• (3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
• 4) irritability and aggressiveness
• (5) reckless disregard for safety
• (6) consistent irresponsibility
• (7) lack of remorse

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Criteria (cont.)

• B. Individual is at least 18 years old
• C. Evidence of Conduct Disorder before age 15
• D. Occurrence of antisocial behavior not
  exclusively during course of schizophrenia or a
  manic episode

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Criteria and features of ASPD

• 2. Course and statistics
• - prevalence is 3 in men lower in women
• - sex difference is probably real, but may be
  inflated by clinician bias
• - onset in childhood (by definition)
• - CD portion may start as early as age 3-5

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Statistics and course (cont.)

• Course of all APDs is chronic, but overt
  antisocial behavior seems to age out after 40
• - could still show ASPD features (e.g., lying
  poor work habits)

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Criteria and features of ASPD

• 3. Causal influences
• - twin, family, and adoption data show strong
  genetic influence
• - CD also appears to have shared environment
  influence
• - poor socialization due to low fearfulness may
  account for some cases

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Treatment

• Most dont seek treatment for ASPD (usually
  substance abuse)
• No treatment shown to be efficacious
• More likely to end up in jail than in treatment
• Focus is on prevention target antisocial
  children

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Antisocial Personality Disorder
Overlap and lack of overlap among antisocial
personality disorder, psychopathy, and criminality
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Psychopathy

• Cleckley (1941) Disorder characterised by
  constellation of interpersonal, affective and
  behavioural traits
• superficial charm, affective deficits (low
  guilt/empathy), pathological egocentricity,
  impulsivity and irresponsibility
• Criminality considered neither necessary nor
  sufficient for a diagnosis
• Successful psychopaths

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Psychopathy

• Cleckleys description of psychopathy
• Superficial charm
• Absence of delusions and irrational thinking
• Absence of nervousness
• Unreliability
• Untruthfulness and insincerity
• Lack of remorse or shame
• Inadequately motivated antisocial behavior
• Poor judgment and failure to learn by experience

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Psychopathy (cont.)

• Pathological egocentricity and incapacity for
  love
• General poverty in major affective reactions
• Specific loss of insight
• Unresponsiveness in general interpersonal
  relations
• Fantastic and uninviting behavior with drink
• Suicide rarely carried out
• Sex life impersonal, trivial, and poorly
  integrated
• Failure to follow any life plan

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Psychopathy (cont.)

• -MOST PSYCHOPATHS ARE ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITIES
  BUT NOT ALL ANTISOCIAL PERSONALITIES ARE
  PSYCHOPATHS.
• - This is because APD is defined mainly by
  behaviors (Factor 2 antisocial behaviors) and
  doesn't tap the affective/interpersonal
  dimensions (Factor 1 core psychopathic features,
  narcissism) of psychopathy.
• - Further, criminals and APDs tend to "age out"
  of crime psychopaths do not, and are at high
  risk of recidivism.

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PCL-R 20-item

•   Hare's checklist is based on Cleckley's 16-item
  checklist, and the following is a discussion of
  the concepts in the PCL-R
• 1. GLIB and SUPERFICIAL CHARM
• 2. GRANDIOSE SELF-WORTH
• 3. NEED FOR STIMULATION or PRONENESS TO BOREDOM
• 4. PATHOLOGICAL LYING
• 5. CONNING AND MANIPULATIVENESS
• 6. LACK OF REMORSE OR GUILT
• 7. SHALLOW AFFECT
• 8. CALLOUSNESS and LACK OF EMPATHY
• 9. PARASITIC LIFESTYLE
• 10. POOR BEHAVIORAL CONTROLS
• 11. PROMISCUOUS SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
• 12. EARLY BEHAVIOR PROBLEMS
• 13. LACK OF REALISTIC, LONG-TERM GOALS
• 14. IMPULSIVITY
• 15. IRRESPONSIBILITY
• 16. FAILURE TO ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OWN
  ACTIONS
• 17. MANY SHORT-TERM MARITAL RELATIONSHIPS
• 18. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY

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Psychopathy and ASPD

• Most psychopaths (with the exception of those who
  somehow manage to plow their way through life
  without coming into formal or prolonged contact
  with the criminal justice system) meet the
  criteria for ASPD, but most individuals with ASPD
  are not psychopaths. Further, ASPD is very common
  in criminal populations, and those with the
  disorder are heterogeneous with respect to
  personality, attitudes and motivations for
  engaging in criminal behavior.
• As a result, a diagnosis of ASPD has limited
  utility for making differential predictions of
  institutional adjustment, response to treatment,
  and behavior following release from prison.
• In contrast, a high PCL-R score depends as much
  on inferred personality traits as on antisocial
  behaviors, and when used alone or in conjunction
  with other variables has considerable predictive
  validity with respect to treatment outcome,
  institutional adjustment, recidivism and violence

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Psychopathy and ASPD

• For example, several studies have found that
  psychopathic offenders or forensic psychiatric
  patients (as defined by the PCL-R) are as much as
  three or four times more likely to violently
  reoffend following release from custody than are
  nonpsychopathic offenders or patients. ASPD, on
  the other hand, has relatively little predictive
  power, at least with forensic populations (Hart
  and Hare, in press).

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Lifetime course
Lifetime course of criminal behavior in
psychopaths and non-psychopaths
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Questions?