Title: Understanding the Female Psychopath
Headings: Understanding the Female Psychopath
Understanding the Female Psychopath
The Seeds of Female Psychopathy
Blinded by Bias
Psychopathy with a Feminine Touch
Sisters in Crime
The Take-Away

Content: Sisters in Crime
Female offenders make up 13% of the U.S. prison population; 17% of them are psychopaths. In comparison to males, female psychopaths commit fewer violent crimes and are more likely to be arrested for fraud, property crimes, and drug possession. In comparison to non-psychopathic female inmates, they start their criminal careers earlier, reoffend more often, and commit premeditated crimes motivated by power, dominance or personal gain. Female psychopaths also kill and, when they do, they don’t go far from home. ( 11) Of the 60,000 murders committed by women between 1976 and 1997, 60+% were against an intimate or family member (in comparison to 20% for male perpetrators). Female serial killers, also kill people they know – the insured husband, the inconvenient child, the whistleblowing client, the tiresome hospital patient. And, they away with their crimes for a lot longer; on average, female serial killers elude arrest for twice as long as men. It’s the victims who pay for that extra time.