Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

as poor scholastic performance, weak connections to

school, and low educational aspirations. Such factors

are associated with delinquent behavior even when

cognitive factors (such as intelligence or attention

deficits) are taken into account. Youths who drop out

of high school are more likely than those who gradu-

ate to engage in delinquent activities. School policies

such as suspension and expulsion have been found to

exacerbate delinquent behavior among at-risk youths.

Prediction

Risk factors combine in complex ways to influence

individual behavior. Although these factors can be

used to predict the relative probabilities of offending

in large groups with similar characteristics, they can-

not be reliably used to predict the behavior of specific

individuals. Even among groups with numerous risk

factors, the majority of youths generally do not

offend, making it extremely difficult to use such fac-

tors to identify individual future offenders with mean-

ingful accuracy. The number of “false positives” from

such predictions would exceed the number of “true

positives,” and the potential stigma of being labeled as

a “future offender” would itself be detrimental.

Elizabeth Cauffman

See alsoChild Maltreatment; Child Sexual Abuse;

Classification of Violence Risk (COVR); Conduct

Disorder; Criminal Behavior, Theories of; Divorce and

Child Custody; Extreme Emotional Disturbance; Juvenile

Offenders; Juvenile Psychopathy; Mental Health Needs of

Juvenile Offenders; Risk Assessment Approaches;

Substance Use Disorders; Victimization

Further Readings

Farrington, D. P. (1995). The development of offending and

antisocial behavior from childhood: Key findings from the

Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Journal of

Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 36,929–964.

McCord, J., Widom, C. S., & Crowell, N. A. (2001). Juvenile

crime, juvenile justice. Panel on juvenile crime:

Prevention, treatment, and control.Washington, DC:

National Academy Press.

Moffitt, T. (1993). Adolescence-limited and life-course-

persistent antisocial behavior: A developmental taxonomy.

Psychological Review, 100,674–701.

Office of the Surgeon General. (2001). Youth violence:

A report of the Surgeon General.Washington, DC: U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the

Secretary, Office of Public Health and Science, Office of

the Surgeon General. Retrieved from http://www

.surgeongeneral.gov/library/youthviolence/toc.html

Tremblay, R. E., & LeMarquand, D. (2001). Individual risk

and protective factors. In R. Loeber & D. P. Farrington

(Eds.),Child delinquents: Development, intervention, and

service needs(pp. 137–164). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

JUVENILEPSYCHOPATHY

Despite disagreement about its exact contours, most

conceptualizations of psychopathic personality disor-

der emphasize traits of emotional detachment, includ-

ing callousness, failure to form close emotional bonds,

low anxiety proneness, remorselessness, and deceitful-

ness. Nevertheless, most measures of psychopathy go

beyond these interpersonal and affective features to

assess repeated involvement in antisocial behavior,

which many scholars view as peripheral to the con-

struct. Chiefly, this is because most measures are based

on the Psychopathy Checklist–Revised (PCL–R),

which weighs past violent and antisocial behavior as

strongly as traits of emotional detachment. Over the

past decade, researchers have extended this adult mea-

sure of psychopathy downward to adolescents and

children, with the goal of assessing “juvenile psy-

chopathy.” This research has gained considerable

momentum, despite ongoing controversy about the

appropriateness of diagnosing psychopathy before

youths’ personalities have reached a period of relative

developmental stability. Most contemporary research

and virtually all practical interest revolve around the

reliability and utility of measures of juvenile psy-

chopathy in forecasting youthful offenders’ violent and

antisocial behavior. In this entry, this movement is

noted, but research on the validity of extending this

construct to youths is emphasized. Theoretically dri-

ven research on the potential mechanisms that under-

pin psychopathy reveals the importance of emotional

detachment as a likely manifestation of psychopathy in

youths. However, there is no compelling evidence that

the purported traits of psychopathy (a) remain stable

during the transition to adulthood or (b) do not respond

to treatment. This limits the utility of measures of psy-

chopathy for informing legal decisions with long-term

consequences concerning youth. Although relevant

measures have been developed for children as young

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