Psychopathy and young offenders

There is growing interest in the construct of psychopathy in both adolescent and childhood populations. This interest is underpinned by observations that psychopathy in adults is linked to chronic criminal behaviour, institutional disruptiveness, unresponsiveness to treatment and comorbidity with other disorders. Extending this construct to young people is fraught with difficulty both conceptually and practically. In this contribution we review the extant literature and conclude that the use of the psychopathy construct in young people is currently more prejudicial than probative; the lacunae in the empirical base means that decisions about the individual case – based on this construct – can only be speculative.