Dysfunctional personality traits and demographic variables associated with violence risk in male sexual offenders: a study on Italian adult inmates

Sexual offending is a highly relevant public health problem. The effectiveness of policies and interventions aimed at the reduction of violent (sexual and nonsexual) recidivism depends on our ability to develop accurate risk assessment tools. To assess the association between violence risk and psychopathy and dysfunctional personality traits in sexual offending, a national sample of 82 male sex offenders were administered the Italian translations of the HCR-20 V-3, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, and the Personality Inventory for DSM-5. Selected demographic variables were significantly and non-negligibly associated with increased risk of violence; moreover, specific PID-5 traits were found to be significantly, positively, and non-negligibly associated with sexual offender’s increased risk for violence. According to our findings, sexual offenders who were not working before conviction, have to serve a long time in jail, manifest prominent observer-rated psychopathy features, and report high scores on restricted affectivity, intimacy avoidance, callousness, distractibility, and irresponsibility, over and above their PID-5 psychopathy-related personality profile and PCL-R total score, are likely to have an increased risk for general violence. Our findings suggested that personality dysfunctions, as they are assessed relying on both PCL-R and PID-5, may play a major role as risk factors for general violence in male adult sexual offenders. Overall, our study provided useful data for increasing the understanding of the risk for general violence among male adult sexual offenders.