Psychopathic Personality Disorders and Relapse Into Crime (From International Center for Comparative Criminology, V 2 - The Criminal Personality, P 35-49, 1977, Alice Parizeau, ed. - See NCJ-70503)

• NCJ Number: 70505
• Author(s): J Kozarska-Dworska
• Date Published: 1977
• Length: 15 pages
• Publication Format: Document
• Language: English
• Country: Canada
• Note: Paper presented at conference held at Warsaw (Poland) in 1976

Annotation

The relationship between psychopathy and recidivism is analyzed by examining 287 psychopaths sentenced over an 8-year period.

Abstract

Only 19.9 percent of the sample are being punished for the first time, while 28.5 are imprisoned for the second time and 20.8 percent have been convicted for the fifth time. Of those punished for the first time, 50 of 57 have been previously detained in a reformatory. Although the number of the group returning to socially positive surroundings is high, the recidivism rate is 59.2 percent within 6 months, with a rate of 73.9 percent after several months for those punished more than once. Analysis suggests that the consistency of relapse results because of a connection between the nature of the offenses committed and the psychopaths' personalities. The latter tend to be cold, to react impulsively, and to have difficulty adapting to their environment. Disciplinary punishment does not affect their activities, and long prison stays only reinforce distorted views of the world. In general, psychopaths adapt easily to the 'other life' in penitentiaries, which favors hostility toward authority, lawlessness, egocentricity, and violent image of macho strength and virility. Manliness is expressed through emotional coolness, ruthlessness, and imperturbability at any depravity. Norms such as diligence, industriousness, and interest in knowledge are not recognized. The prison subculture is based on the independence of inmates who have never conformed to the norms of society. Many psychopaths adjust well to a behavioral model which corresponds to their natural tendencies, while others remain outside the subculture, but not necessarily because of correct social attitudes. Nevertheless, even the psychopaths who exploit the subculture do not identify with it. Their relapse is attributable to a combination of permanent environmental disintegration regardless of surroundings and of the sociopathy which is the result of punitive isolation from a socially positive environment. Tables and notes are supplied. --in English.