The Psychopaths In The Criminal Justice System

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The criminal justice system continues to be underfunded, overworked and continuously criticized. The system is made up of hundreds and thousands of small departments and groups, all working in tandem to reduce crime and its effects. It’s a fragile system that is easily disrupted, with one ever-growing contributory factor being psychopaths. Psychopathy is a personality disorder that’s characterized by an inability to experience, feel or reflect emotions, antisocial behaviour, deficient affective experiences, as well as impulsive and irresponsible behaviours. Psychopathic traits are not often displayed outwardly, psychopaths put on a good show and don’t want to be recognized as different. Often misdiagnosed as general delinquency, depression …show more content…
At any time, approximately 300,000 psychopaths exist in Canada (Hare, 2018) and yet these individuals have a disproportionate impact on the criminal justice system. Psychopaths are twenty to twenty-five times more likely than non-psychopaths to be in prison, four to eight times more likely to violently recidivate compared to non-psychopaths, and are resistant to most forms of treatment (Hoffman, 2018). While researching the effects of psychopaths, I noticed research was focused on how psychopaths affect people, essentially the focus was on the victim(s) of the psychopath’s crimes. How they were harmed, impacted or affected by their crimes and their existence. With this victim-oriented approach to studying psychopathy, I wondered how psychopaths and their behaviours applied to the criminal justice system as a whole. Thus my research question for this assignment was: what implications does psychopathy have on the criminal justice system? With the sub-question: what area(s) of the criminal justice system is most affected by …show more content…
Recognizing these areas play into Risk Assessment, psychopathy is correlated with higher rates of recidivism. Understanding how these traits influence sentencing outcomes allows for better risk assessment and management strategies for better public safety. Sentencing and treatment again has a cost aspect to it, sending individuals to prison is costly and the trial process is not cheap. Based on my research questions, I knew that I needed to study a show where there would be clear depictions of psychopathy. The question wasn’t what these psychopaths were, but what did these psychopaths do. Building off of that idea, I selected Criminal Minds as my epistemological research question. Criminal Minds is an American Television series that began in 2005 and is still ongoing, with over 16 seasons currently airing. The show focuses on the FBI’s BAU (Behavioral Analysis Unit) team. The team is composed of criminal profilers, computer techs and law enforcement agents who work to solve America’s most twisted crimes. The team flies around the country to assist local police departments in solving seemingly unsolvable
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