Aggression and Violent Behavior xxx (xxxx) xxx Please cite this article as: Matt DeLisi, Aggression and Violent Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101521 Available online 4 November 2020 1359-1789/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Psychopathy and pathological violence in a criminal career: A forensic case report Matt DeLisi a, * , Alan J. Drury b , Michael J. Elbert b a Iowa State University, 510 Farm House Lane, 203A East Hall, Ames, Iowa 50011, United States of America b United States Probation, United States of America A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Psychopathy Career criminal Murder Homicide Inmate behavior Prison murder Security threat group ABSTRACT Extreme criminal careers illustrate the effects of multiple forms of psychopathology especially the confuence of psychopathy, multiple externalizing behaviors, and homicidality. Here, we present a forensic case report of Mr. Z, an offender whose antisocial conduct and criminal justice system involvement spans the late 1940s to the present, whose criminal career dovetails with signifcant events in correctional history in the United States in the middle to late 20th century, and who was a multiple homicide offender while incarcerated in both state and federal prisons. The case report method provides rich qualitative data to supplement quantitative fndings on psychopathy, career criminals, the severe 5%, and life-course-persistent offender prototypes. Given the extraordinary behaviors and psychopathology of the most severe offenders, forensic case reports are useful to refne criminological theory and research, and inform correctional practice. 1. Introduction Although they are not identical constructs, psychopathy and criminal careers are so robustly interrelated that it is usually the case that the most psychopathic offenders also have among the most extensive criminal records and justice system involvement, and, if analyzing the personality functioning of the most violent career criminals, psycho- pathic features are usually present. When one considers the behavioral dispositions and tendencies that unfold from this personality disorder, psychopathy is highly conducive of criminal offending and violence perpetration. One reason for this association is that the affective, interpersonal, lifestyle and behavioral features of psychopathy are facilitative of criminal opportunities, of the proactive victimization of others, and of repeated refusal to comply with court orders and condi- tional sentences. As Hare (1999, p. 186) noted, “in spite of their small numbers—perhaps 1 percent of the general population—psychopaths make up a signifcant portion of our prison populations and are responsible for a markedly disproportionate amount of serious crime and social distress.” To illustrate, a study of a nationally representative sample of Americans found that the most psychopathic participants were two to fve times more likely to get arrested, sentenced to proba- tion, or incarcerated compared to less psychopathic persons (Beaver et al., 2017). Thus, psychopathy constitutes a pressing and costly societal burden (DeLisi, Elbert, & Drury, 2018; DeLisi et al., 2018; Hare, 1999; Reidy et al., 2015) given its role in the most severe variants of criminal offending. Voluminous research studies employing data from Belgium (Declercq et al., 2012), Canada (Corrado et al., 2015; McCuish et al., 2015), China (Wang et al., 2020), Cyprus (Andershed et al., 2018), Finland (Lindberg et al., 2009), the Netherlands (Garofalo, Bogaerts, & Denissen, 2018), Portugal (Pechorro et al., 2014; Pechorro et al., 2017), Sweden (Salihovic & Stattin, 2017), United Kingdom (Piquero et al., 2012), and the United States (Driessen et al., 2018; Hawes et al., 2018; Vaughn & DeLisi, 2008) show that psychopathy is strongly predictive of serious or career criminality such that the more varied and extensive the psychopathic features, generally the earlier emerging, more chronic, and more serious the offending career. Similarly, a bevy of meta-analytic studies on antisocial conduct (Leistico et al., 2008), delinquency (Geerlings et al., 2020), serious delinquency (Asscher et al., 2011), instrumental/proactive and reactive violence (Blais et al., 2014), ho- micide (Fox & DeLisi, 2019), and recidivism (Asscher et al., 2011; Edens et al., 2007) substantiate that psychopathy is an important feature of serious offending and recidivism after a correctional intervention. In this way, the most severe and restrictive components of the criminal justice system, such as maximum-security prisons and death rows are dispro- portionately populated by clinically psychopathic offenders. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: delisi@iastate.edu (M. DeLisi), Alan_drury@iasp.uscourts.gov (A.J. Drury), Michael_elbert@iasp.uscourts.gov (M.J. Elbert). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Aggression and Violent Behavior journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/aggviobeh https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2020.101521 Received 13 July 2020; Received in revised form 5 October 2020; Accepted 23 October 2020