There has been a recent outrage in India regarding murder of a 7-year old child in a reputed school of Delhi-NCR region. School bus conductor was held guilty for the murder as he has confessed about his crime. There are suspicions regarding involvement of other individuals in the crime and constant blaming of school authorities for hiding the criminals. There is widespread criticism of school system in being careless in preventing the crime in their premises.
In surge of these uproars from parents, and media, CBSE, an educational body has issued a circular that all the staff members (teaching as well as non-teaching) of all schools have to undergo psychometric assessment by the professionals in order to safeguard the lives of students.
My question is whether such a procedure is possible and to what extent. Can we really predict criminal tendencies and behaviors through psychological tests? Can tests like MMPI and Hare's Psychopathy Checklist (Screening Version) be used to assess criminal behaviors? If yes, then what other tests can be used for this purpose?
I also would like to know whether such measures have been taken in other countries/states and to what amount of success is this initiative feasible.
Thank you so much in advance for your patience and understanding.
PS: Find below references regarding my query-
1) http://cbse.nic.in/newsite/circulars/2017/Circular%20Safety%20in%20School%2012.09.2017.pdf
2) http://www.hindustantimes.com/gurgaon/gurgaon-8-year-old-ryan-international-school-student-killed-by-bus-conductor-after-sexual-assault-attempt/story-Nwow2FGqxpGgVPXIhs8UDL.html
3) http://indianexpress.com/article/india/cbi-probe-pradyuman-thakur-murder-ryan-international-school-gurgaon-murder-manohar-lal-khattar-ashok-4845191/
The risk assessment can not rely on a sole psychometric result.
You mentionned the PCL -R which is not a test per se but a scale determining the degree of psychopathy that an individual can have.
Psychopathy is a personality trait that is highly correlated with aggressive behaviors, and linked statistically with rape. But as the two former colleagues put it, it is not because you scored positively to a PCL-R scale, that you WILL indeed commit a specific type of offense.
The MMPI-2 is one of the most famous personnality questionaire but it does not have a predictive value by itself, if there are some scale such as the O-H and the 43/34 and 49/94 profiles which are linked to impulsive behavior and sometime violent conducts, it does not provide a predictive certainty. Check this book by Ben Porath, Graham & al "Forensic applications of the MMPI-2",
Risk assessment is a mix combination of psychometric testing, actuarial tools and an analysis of the situational risks inherent to the singularity of the individual.
Some elements correlated with agressive and / or violent behavior are the use of psychoactive drugs, personality traits such as psychopathy, delusion and psychiatric disorders left untreated, past offenses. But it remains a probabilty that an offense can occur, but sometimes it does not (check false negative and false positive)
Most of the time a better coordination between services would provide a far more effective result on a crime prevention field, than a psychometric score.
As Ben Levin said in his answer the passion shall be left outside of the Court, probabilty and scores are not an insurance of a zero risk.
As said in previous comments as well, there is no measure that can predict the future, and even measures that are highly correlated with criminal behavior still often have relatively low predictive validity. Furthermore, making important decisions based on this assessment, for a group of people that does not have a previous criminal history is not advised.
When looking at risk assessment tools and measures such as the PCL-R, there is a strict advice to only use these within a criminal population, in part because a lot of the items are based on criminal history, and in part because you need to rely on file information (rather than only what people say). This means that these types of measures are not recommended for use in the general population, let alone for prevention purposes.
Measures such as the MMPI are usable in the general population, and may give some information on a persons personality, which you then could use as the basis of a further inquiry, for example by selecting people with worrisome profiles and doing in-depth follow-up interviews, more regular checks or mandate some type of treatment or guidance. Only using scores on tests to make decisions that could have huge negative consequences on someone's life however, is never an option.
The exact prediction of committing a crime is not possible, but if it is possible to establish trends within the mental structure of the individual, there are tests that identify personality traits such as those that have already mentioned, it is important to keep in mind that a profile is not built with one or two tests, requires multiple instruments, requires the expertise of the professional in depth interview and requires including the use of projective techniques.
I think this question has been answered...no, psychometrics are certainly not 100% accurate at predicting any future behaviour, whether criminal conduct or not. Psychometrics are frequently used in Australia Justice systems to make some predictions of various forms of RE-offending (such as violence, sexual, generalist), based on the presence of both actuarial (historic) and dynamic (changeable) risk factors, but these should never be used to make predictions of those who haven't already offended. Human behaviour is just too unpredictable, too uncertain, too many inter-relating influencing factors. Oh, and also remember, that Psychopathy is a trait that is frequently found in many senior positions - politicians, the legal system, military and so on... there are many 'functional' psychopaths in the world. The use of the PCL would likely inadvertently remove these people from their positions when there is no evidence that they are 'dangerous' to society.
Como han dicho anteriormente los colegas, es difícil predecir comportamientos criminales, sólo mediante pruebas psicométricas, porque intervienen los factores de simulación y de agradabilidad social. Pero sí, señalar tendencias a no cometer comportamientos criminales con las pruebas proyectivas, tales como el Rorschach.
La evolución e investigaciones realizadas con elTest de Rorschach utilizando el Sistema Comprehensivo (SC) y en la actualidad el R-PAS (www.R-PAS.org), ha permitido el desarrollo de varias escalas idiográficas (análisis de contenido), que podrían indicarnos alguna probabilidad de quién no podría cometer tales delitos. Aunque todavía no se han hecho estudios sobre este tema.
Creo que estas escalas serían las siguientes;
1.- Escalas de Agresividad AGM (Movimiento agresivo) y AGC
(Contenido Agresivo).Ausencia de codificación o inferior al promedio
2.-Escala de Mutualidad y Autonomía MOA , Con codificación de nivel 1 y 2
.
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