Juvenile psychopathy equally predicts gang membership for females and males

In their recent journal article in Women & Criminal Justice, authors Joseph and Rembert studied the relationship between youth gang membership and psychopathy, which they defined in the article as “a personality disorder distinguished by lack of empathy, sensation seeking, severe irresponsibility, interpersonal exploitativeness coupled with persistent and versatile criminality.” Previous research has more typically focused on the sociological factors contributing to gang membership, not psychological, and even less so on these factors in girls. According to Joseph and Rembert, their study is “amongst the first to investigate probable sex differences for psychopathy as it relates to youth gang membership.” They conducted secondary analyses on data collected from male and female youth, aged 14-18, who participated in the baseline interview of Research on Pathways to Desistance [Maricopa County, AZ and Philadelphia County, PA]: Subject Measures, 2000-2010 (ICPSR 29961). Although its focus was on social and psychological variables related to desistance, the authors took advantage of the fact that the baseline interview included questions about gang membership and about sexual behavior, and that several relevant empirically validated measures, like the Psychopathy Checklist Youth Version (PCL-YV), were administered. Controlling for variables associated with gang membership, Joseph and Rembert found that higher juvenile psychopathy scores were associated with being a gang member for boys and girls, and that the influence of juvenile psychopathy on gang membership “is equal across boys and girls, in other words the influence of psychopathy does not significantly differ across sex.”

Although the authors used only the baseline data, making their study cross-sectional, Research on Pathways to Desistance is a longitudinal study, conducted between 2000 and 2010, focused on serious adolescent offenders as they transition from adolescence into early adulthood. The data are available in a series of eight studies distributed by the National Addiction & HIV Data Archive Program (NAHDAP). In addition to interview responses, Research on Pathways to Desistance collected official records information and monthly life-calendar data, available through ICPSR’s restricted data access system. More publications analysing Research on Pathways to Desistance data can be found on the series home page.