Juvenile Psychopathy and Community Treatment Response in Youth Adjudicated for Sexual Offenses

• Author: Erika Y. Rojas,Mark E. Olver
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X21994066
• Published date: 01 November 2022
• Date: 01 November 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X21994066

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2022, Vol. 66(15) 1575 –1602

© The Author(s) 2021

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X21994066

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Article

Juvenile Psychopathy and

Community Treatment

Response in Youth

Adjudicated for Sexual

Offenses

Erika Y. Rojas1 and Mark E. Olver2

Abstract

The present study examined the association of juvenile psychopathy features and

treatment response in a sample of 102 youth, court adjudicated for sexual offenses

and followed up more than 11 years in the community. The Psychopathy Checklist:

Youth Version (PCL: YV) was rated from comprehensive archival sources, along with

a youth sexual offense risk assessment and treatment planning measure scored pre-

and posttreatment. The PCL: YV converged with domains of sexual offense risk and

change in conceptually meaningful ways, and significantly predicted nonsexual violent,

general violent, and any recidivism; it did not significantly predict sexual recidivism.

Higher levels of psychopathy-related personality features were significantly associated

with noncompletion of youth sexual offense-specific treatment, while changes in risk

were associated with decreased recidivism controlling for PCL: YV score and baseline

risk at p < .10. The findings underscore the importance of intervention and support

services for youth convicted of sexual offenses as well as the clinical and risk relevance

of the juvenile psychopathy construct to decrease violent victimization to others.

Keywords

Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version, juvenile psychopathy, sexual offending,

treatment, recidivism

1Private Practice, Saskatoon, SK, Canada

2University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Mark E. Olver, Department of Psychology, University of Saskatchewan, 9 Campus Drive, Arts 154,

Saskatoon, SK S7N5A5, Canada.

Email: mark.olver@usask.ca

994066IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X21994066International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyRojas and Olver

research-article2021

1576 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 66(15)

The problem of sexual violence is a pressing social concern with substantial health, jus-

tice, and community safety implications. The most recent Canadian statistics available

demonstrate that youth are overrepresented in the commission of sex crimes; in 2014,

they accounted for 17% of persons accused of sex crimes and 26% of sex crimes against

persons under age 18, most of which (>80%) were for contact offenses (Allen & Superle,

2016). In 41% of instances, the victim was a child under the age of 12 and most victims

were a friend/acquaintance (64%) or family member (31%). The consequences of sexual

violence are profound, with the results of meta-analyses documenting significant injuri-

ous psychological (Amado et al., 2015) and physical (Irish et al., 2010) health effects.

Juvenile psychopathy refers to a problematic pattern of interpersonal (e.g., impres-

sion management, egocentricity, lying, manipulation), affective (e.g., callousness, lack

of prosocial emotions, inadequate guilt), and behavioral (e.g., risk taking, impulsivity,

serious rule violations, poor anger controls) features. The traits are extreme, atypical,

and maladaptive variants of the personality, emotional, and behavioral attributes char-

acteristic of the developmental period of adolescence (Forth et al., 2003). Perhaps

unsurprisingly, youth with elevated features of psychopathy are overrepresented in the

youth justice system (Forth et al., 2003) and are more likely than youth with relatively

few features to commit varied harms against family members, peers, or other members

of the public, including sexual offenses (Caldwell et al., 2008).

The present study examines the forensic and therapeutic role and relevance of the

juvenile psychopathy construct among youth with formal criminal histories of sexual

offending. The following review situates the juvenile psychopathy construct, particu-

larly as measured by the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL: YV; Forth et al.,

2003)—a prominent symptom-construct rating scale of juvenile psychopathy designed

to assess the interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features of psychopathy in male

and female adolescents between ages 12 and 18—within the youth sexual offending,

assessment, and intervention literatures.

The Role and Relevance of Juvenile Psychopathy in

Youth Sexual Offending

Juvenile psychopathy is a construct with forensic and clinical relevance, and it comes

with a host of correlates that equate to harmful impacts including sexual as well as

other forms of interpersonal violence (Edens et al., 2007; Gretton et al., 2001; Olver

et al., 2009). In his review, DeLisi (2009) presents a compelling case for psychopathy

as an explanatory theory for criminal behavior, given that the syndrome accounts for a

disproportionate amount of varied, often instrumental, antisocial behavior across the

lifespan. Juvenile psychopathy remains a robust predictor of delinquency and criminal

behavior across different operationalizations of the construct (Geerlings et al., 2020),

and trajectory research demonstrates an early onset of antisocial behavior that can

persist into adult years (McCuish et al., 2015).

Research demonstrates that the pattern of antisociality of juvenile psychopathy can

extend to sexual offending, although studies have differed in profiles of juvenile psy-

chopathy among sexual offending and nonsexual offending youth. In a Portuguese