Death is different: Reply to Olver et al. (2020).

Abstract

In our "Statement of Concerned Experts on the Use of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised [PCL-R] in Capital Sentencing to Assess Risk for Institutional Violence," DeMatteo et al. (2020) summarized the relevant empirical research and concluded that the PCL-R cannot and should not be used to make predictions that an individual will engage in serious institutional violence with any reasonable degree of precision or accuracy in the context of capital sentencing decisions. In a solicited commentary, Olver et al. (2020) raised several concerns about our statement and presented new analyses of the research literature. In this reply, we identify crucial points about which Olver et al. disagreed with the statement and, after analyzing their concerns, conclude that their concerns are either (a) based on misunderstanding or mischaracterization of the statement, or (b) irrelevant to the purpose and content of our statement. We also conclude that it is not possible to properly evaluate the new analyses presented by Olver et al. in the absence of full technical detail that would permit adequate peer review.