[Assessing psychopathic personality disorders for legal procedures for using a version for adolescents of Hare's...

In accordance with Robert Hare's concept, the term psychopathy was operationalized in 1985 when the revised form of the psychopathy checklist (PCL-R) was published. Since then, the PCL-R has been used internationally. For several years in North America and now even in England and the Netherlands, personality traits of psychopathy have also been studied in children and juveniles. Based on the PCL-R, a checklist for adolescents (PCL-YV) was developed that takes the special conditions of adolescents into account. The goal of this paper was to test the applicability of the PCL-YV retrospectively in a sample of forensic psychiatric evaluations of delinquent juveniles that were assigned to the Clinic for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Cologne, Germany. Based on results collected with the PCL-YV, data on groups of low- and medium-scoring juveniles were classified which partially differed significantly in relation to sociodemographic and anamnestic data. Furthermore, factor analyses showed a three-factor model solution. Associations with legal issues such as the question of criminal responsibility could not be found. In summary, the results indicate the applicability of the PCL-YV for adolescents but show the difficulties of retrospective design without conducting PCL interviews.