Severe 5%: Understanding the Criminal Justice System

Iowa State professor of sociology Matt DeLisi will draw on his research, clinical, and practitioner experiences working with pathological offenders to provide another framework for assessing the U.S. criminal justice system. Decades of research from around the world have shown that roughly 5% of the criminal population is responsible for more than half of the incidence of crime, and this pathological group accounts for between 50 to 90% of the most violent crimes including murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery. DeLisi will explain why the system is mostly successful, providing treatment and supervision of individuals that are relatively amenable to rehabilitation. He will also explain why the putative “failures” of the justice system are not primarily the responsibility of law enforcement, judicial, and correctional staff, but instead are the result of a host of pathological conditions that render the severe 5% impervious to punishment. College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Dean's Lecture Series