Development and validation of an imprisonment-appropriate version of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5)

Assessing maladaptive personality in the forensic context

The main prognostic questions psychologists working in prisons need to deal with are early prison release, paroles and day paroles and the placement in open or closed correctional facilities.  The legal systems explicitly states what has to be considered when answering these questions. Examining these statutory requirements it becomes evident, that the prisoner´s personality is one important aspect that has to be considered. For example, the German criminal code demands to consider the personality, past life, the context of the offence, the consequences in case of reoffending, the demeanor in detention and the living conditions outside of detention, when deciding about early prison release (§ 57 Abs. 1 StGB).
This juridically required focus on personality is in line with results of past research. Personality traits have been proven to be  relevant predictors of deviant behavior, recidivism and institutional misconduct. Hence personality plays an important role for legal and empirical reasons when answering the main questions in the penal system. However, those personality inventories that are established in prisons appear inadequate because of their unreasonable number of items, their deficient psychometric properties or their lack of theoretical foundation. Considering the serious consequences of prognostic misdeterminations in forensic settings it is stringently required to implement a practicable, theoretically well-grounded personality inventory whose psychometric quality is ascertained for self- and informant reports. To assess maladaptive personality in the forensic context, we developed and validated self- and informant-report versions of an imprisonment-appropriate version of the PID-5, the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 Forensic Faceted Brief Form (PID-5-FFBF) in a large sample of condemned prisoners. In addition, we explored the psychometric properties and predictive validity of the NARQ and different dark Triad measures in forensic context.

OSF Link: https://osf.io/eefvq/