Psychopathy and the combination of psychopathy and sexual deviance as predictors of sexual recidivism: meta-analytic findings using the Psychopathy Checklist--Revised.

Clinicians routinely administer Hare's (2003) Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) to sex offenders and report PCL-R scores as meaningful predictors of recidivism risk. Although a 2005 meta-analysis reported a small (d=0.29) association between PCL-R scores and sexual recidivism (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2005), no meta-analysis has examined effects for PCL-R factors and facets, the widely cited combination of high PCL-R and high sexual deviance scores, or potential moderators of the PCL-R/recidivism relation. We conducted a meta-analysis of effects from all available studies examining the relation between PCL-R scores and sexual recidivism (k=20, N=5,239). The effect for PCL-R Total scores predicting sexual recidivism was d=0.40, which falls beyond the upper end of the 2005 confidence interval [.20, .38]. Effects were stronger for Factor 2 (d=0.44) and Facet 4 (d=0.40) scores than other factor or facet scores (ds=0.01 to 0.17). Effects tended to be stronger for scores calculated for research (d=0.44) compared to those calculated for clinical use (d=0.28). Offenders who scored high on both the PCL-R and a measure of sexual deviance were more likely to reoffend sexually than other offenders (odds ratio=2.80 to 3.21, k=6). Results indicate that PCL-R scores, particularly combined with a measure of sexual deviance, are potentially relevant to sex offender risk. But results also underscore several practical challenges to implementing these findings in routine clinical practice. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.