Neuropsychological profiles of members of organized crime and drug-traffic organizations

Feggy Ostrosky, Karina Cecilia Borja, César Romero Rebollar, Karla Ximena Díaz Galván

Laboratory of Neuropsychology and Psychophysiology, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico

Abstract: Members of organized crime and drug traffic organization have developed a hierarchical model of association while participating in the production, distribution, and commercialization of drugs and defense of their territory. The nature of these organizations leads to extremely violent acts, similar to those performed by psychopathic delinquents. Eighty-two incarcerated male offenders – members of these organizations – were assessed and later classified according to the role they played in the organization: kingpins, money launderers, protectors, enforcers, and distributors/producers. These individuals were paired to a control group of 76 nonincarcerated healthy male volunteers from a community sample. We obtained their psychopathic profile and frontal lobe functioning using the Psychopathy Checklist, Revised (PCL-R), PCL-R score, and the Frontal Lobe and Executive Functions Battery. Kingpins and enforcers were considered as psychopaths across the entire range, while the money launderers fit in the description of successful psychopathy, and interesting contrasts were observed within the groups in the PCL-R factors. The orbitofrontal cortex was the functional area affected in the inmate sample, being more detrimentally affected in the most violent samples, thus providing a useful measure of psychopathy and violence of unimpaired criminals. An objective classification of incarcerated criminals will allow us to distinguish between neuronal and cultural psychopaths and sociopaths, which will help us establish adequate readaptation programs. Social issues were also determinants: it was found that in the environment where these criminals grew up, there is a broad acceptance and validation of lifestyles characterized by the accumulation and showing off of material values over intellectual and social values, which in addition to drug consumption trigger the development of aggressive and violent personalities. Readaptation programs must strengthen cognitive abilities, which are normally diminished in these individuals, and encourage a lifestyle with an “integral wealth perspective” that values not only economic but also personal, social, familial, labor, and cultural assets.

Keywords: psychopathy, violence, executive functions, orbitofrontal regions