0000000000364705
AUTHOR
Chiara Caprì
Mafia and psychopathy
Background In popular culture, Mafia members are often portrayed as ruthless, callous and remorseless, but there is no empirical research on their personality traits. Aims The goal of this research was to examine levels of psychopathic traits among Mafia members who have been convicted of a criminal offence. Methods The Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) rated 30 Italian adult male prisoners who had been convicted for Mafia-related crimes (86% resident in one 6-month period) and 39 next adjacent convicted men who were not enrolled in any criminal organisation. Results Mafia members obtained lower PCL-R total scores, interpersonal and affective (PCL-R factor 1) scores and lifestyle scores…
Using Network Community Detection to Investigate the Psychopathy Levels of Subjects Condemned for Mafia Crimes
The main objective of this study is to understand what are the psychopathy levels of subjects condemned for Mafia crimes. To this end we will investigate a set of 30 subjects condemned for Mafia crimes and imprisoned in the “Pagliarelli” jail of Palermo (Italy). We will test their psychopathy level by using the PCL-R test. Additionally we will also investigate some other sociological feature of these subjects. This will allow us to characterize these criminals in terms of some psychiatric or sociological features. Such statistical characterization will be performed by using tools and methodologies of Statistical Physics and Network Theory. We believe that the importance of our study is twof…