To this point, the empirical analyses in this book have focused on individual-level risk and protective factors. It is also important to consider the broader social context in which a person is embedded. Recent scholarship in criminology has identified that “when” a person is (e.g., the era in which they were born, the historical contexts they experience) may matter more than “who” a person is (e.g., psychopathy traits) for involvement in criminal behaviour. Montana et al. (2023) found that the predictive accuracy of markers of criminal propensity was weaker for younger generations exposed to lower crime rates compared to older generations exposed to higher crime rates. Legal systems may be making biased sentencing decisions against the younger generations. However, when it came to ISVYOS data, the PCL:YV was associated with persistent offending in a similar manner, regardless of when someone was born or the type of legal system to which they were exposed. The consistency of findings may be evidence that Canada is in a “settled period” where it is difficult to discern an independent influence of cultural factors on individual behaviour.

Analyses in this chapter focused on what happens in the somewhat rare event that positive outcomes in adulthood do occur for people with psychopathy traits. Do people with psychopathy traits respond to their environment the same way that people without psychopathy traits do? For example, do positive sources of informal social control (e.g., a job, stable housing, and prosocial relationships) decrease the frequency of offending even for people with psychopathy traits? Analyses indicated that measures in adulthood of informal social control, prison networks, and substance use failed to moderate the relationship between psychopathy and offending. However, there was evidence that only people with low scores on the PCL:YV responded to positive sources of informal social control in the expected manner. This implies some level of social resistance on the part of people with psychopathy traits. This finding is illustrated by using qualitative data from an ISVYOS participant who had a relatively positive social environment yet continued to offend over the life course.

Studies that focus on whether psychopathy statistically predicts reoffending are not informative of the process that connects the cause (psychopathy) to the outcome (offending). Understanding the causal mechanisms behind the relationship between psychopathy and offending has received minimal empirical attention. ISVYOS data were used to examine whether the relationship between psychopathy traits in adolescence and persistent offending in adulthood was mediated by social and health outcomes in early adulthood. Of principal importance was the observation that a person’s social environment partially mediated the relationship between psychopathy and persistent offending. Part of the reason why youth with psychopathy traits continue to offend over the life-course is due to the cumulative consequences that psychopathy has on positive social roles and responsibilities, including family relationships, education, and employment. The mediating effect was robust to unobserved confounders. Findings supported the philosophy of risk management strategies that target a person’s social environment when aiming to reduce reoffending. A series of case studies is used to describe the social lives of people with psychopathy traits.

This chapter explores the friendship practices of midlife men and women in long-term couple relationships in the UK. Drawing on qualitative interviews with eighteen adults aged forty to fifty-nine, it examines how friendship is shaped by, and often subordinated to, the couple norm, an ideal that centers monogamous, cohabiting relationships. Although friendship is increasingly celebrated in cultural discourse, it remains routinely deprioritized in midlife. Friends offer emotional support, companionship, and moral guidance, yet their contributions are often undervalued or constrained by normative expectations. At times, emotionally significant friendships were perceived as disruptive to the primacy of the couple bond. The contemporary ideal of friendship as autonomous, equal, and elective, sits uneasily alongside the institutional authority of coupledom. This chapter argues that friendship and couple relationships are not discrete domains but are relationally entangled. By tracing how intimacy is organized through these entanglements, it calls for a critical rethinking of friendship’s role in contemporary personal life.

I wrote this book to help readers entering into the psychopathy literature come away with an understanding of psychopathy that is not watered down. As a professor, I regularly encountered students who sought to learn more about psychopathy but found that peer-reviewed papers were overly technical and assumed a certain level of background knowledge on the part of the reader. Books are not always a viable alternative, as they can be informal and make statements about psychopathy in the absence of empirical evidence. Edited books feature multiple authors, which is a strength; however, they often present contrasting opinions, and no explanation is provided for the differences in opinion. Popular culture sources like True Crime podcasts are regularly factually inaccurate when it comes to discussing psychopathy. In this chapter, I reflect on the limitations of my analyses, describe key take-home messages from each chapter, and integrate these messages to identify overarching themes from the book.

This chapter discusses five debates in the academic literature on psychopathy: (1) is criminal behaviour a trait or a consequence of psychopathy, (2) what is the structure of psychopathy traits, (3) is there such a thing as “successful psychopathy”, (4) can self-report tools reliability measure psychopathy, and (5) do people with psychopathy traits change? Like Chapter 1, the goal is not to determine who won or lost the debate. Instead, the goal is to inform readers of different views on key matters. Where I do not remain neutral is with respect to debunking myths and misconceptions about psychopathy that have been perpetuated by news media and popular culture sources. I explain what the myth is, where the source of confusion appears to have arisen, and what the reality is within the academic literature. For example, I discuss how True Crime podcasts mistake psychosis for psychopathy, how media overestimates the prevalence of psychopathy, and the Hannibal Lecter myth in which people with psychopathy traits are assumed to have high IQs and act as a criminal masterminds.

This chapter will provide a forensic analysis of the threshold of NIAC and is divided into five sections. The first section briefly explores the distinction and relationship between the material elements of NIAC and the threshold of NIAC. In particular, it identifies the overarching theme of NIACs threshold and proposes a three-step analytical process for determining its existence in practice. The second section explores the first step in identifying the existence of a NIAC, referred to here as the qualification of armed violence, which involves identifying the material elements of NIAC within a situation of armed violence. The third section examines how armed violence is evaluated when determining the threshold of NIAC, and in particular, how the expression ‘protracted armed violence’ has been and should be interpreted. The fourth section explores the organizational requirement of NIACs threshold, including the rationale for this requirement, the degree of organization necessary to qualify as a Party to a NIAC, and what organisation looks like in practice. The fifth section provides a typology of armed group organisation, which is examined through the lens of the ability to engage in NIAC. The sixth section concludes by examining the very fulcrum of conflict identification: the question of who or what decides when a situation of armed violence amounts to a NIAC.

While it is almost trite to emphasize that non-international armed conflict (NIAC) is the predominant form of armed conflict today, less well-known is that ‘irregular’ or ‘guerrilla’ warfare has been the predominant form of warfare throughout human history. The ancient city-states of Mesopotamia, the Han dynasty of imperial China, and the Roman and British Empires were all confronted by various forms of civil strife or insurgent citizenry that challenged their authority through armed resistance. Moreover, these ancient and asymmetric rebellions reveal that many of the defining features of modern NIACs, including foreign fighters, targeted killings, and acts of terror, are far from novel, but rather, have been defining features of ‘irregular warfare’ for thousands of years. What is a comparatively recent development, however, are the various ad hoc efforts to define, classify, and regulate rebellions and insurgencies within international law.

In this chapter, our analysis will focus on the causative/inchoative alternation within Basque. Firstly, we will concentrate on the diverse root types that generate causative/inchoative alternating verbs. As we will demonstrate, most verbs that participate in the causative/inchoative alternation appear to derive from other categories, consisting of either (i) a PROPERTY-naming root, (ii) a root combined with the adverbializer morpheme -ka, or (iii) a root paired with an allative or instrumental adposition. Secondly, we will investigate the semantic classes of (derived and non-derived) verbs that exhibit the causative/inchoative alternation and examine their relation to the meaning of causation. Thirdly, we will analyze verbs exclusively exhibiting either the causative or inchoative variant, along with the specific contexts enabling some of them to alternate. Finally, we will explore the metaphorical meaning of some verbs and observe how these meanings facilitate their transitive use.

This book focused on the concept and contours of Non-International Armed Conflict under international law. Its primary purpose was to provide normative and doctrinal guidance for identifying NIACs in real-time in order to determine the applicable frameworks of international law. The concept of NIAC emerged from the adoption of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 as an inverse formulation (not of an international character) of an indeterminate concept (armed conflict) foreign to the lexicon of IHL. This lack of clarity provided states with decades of broad discretion to either deny or assert the existence of a NIAC, regardless of the prevailing facts on the ground. Some 70 years later, the concept of NIAC has evolved considerably through various developments in international law and practice, although has not been stretched beyond its normative or legal foundations. At its most basic, a NIAC is an armed conflict between a state and a non-state actor, or between two or more non-state actors absent the involvement of a state. Accordingly, a NIAC is defined on the basis of the legal status of the opposing Parties as opposed to its territorial delineations, and therefore should not viewed as an internal armed conflict. This book provided a comprehensive and critical analysis of six elements of NIAC, which formed into six distinct Chapters.

In the preceding chapters we have presented Basque data related to several syntactic phenomena and constructions, namely the divide between unergatives and unaccusatives, addition of dative arguments, the variation attested in psych predicates, the causative/inchoative alternation, the impersonal construction, and the morphological causative. In this chapter we intend to explain briefly some of the theoretical approaches that can be adopted in order to account for some of the data presented. Specifically, we will offer an introduction to the syntactic derivation that gives rise to the alternations and variation presented so far. In Sections 8.2 and 8.3 we will explore the syntactic building blocks of verbs and the introduction of their arguments. In Section 8.4 the different types of Voice projections will be discussed. In Section 8.5 we will briefly mention implicit arguments and their (possible) semantic and syntactic nature. In Section 8.6 Applicative projections will be considered. In Section 8.7 the Voice-over-Voice configuration will be explored in order to account for the morphological causative construction and, finally, in Section 8.8 the main conclusions will be presented.

This Chapter will provide a detailed examination of IHL’s threshold of termination and is comprised of five substantive sections. The first section explores the temporal architecture of Common Article 3 (CA3) and Additional Protocol II (APII) to determine what, if anything, conventional IHL has to say about is threshold of termination during NIAC. The second section unpacks and critically examines four doctrinal approaches for determining the temporal scope of IHL during NIAC: the ‘peaceful settlement’ approach, the ‘lasting pacification’ approach, the ‘two-way ratchet’ theory, and the ‘human rights law’ approach. While each of these approaches possess certain advantages and limitations, it is argued that none produce entirely satisfactory results. For this reason, the third section revisits the logic that underpins and informs the theory and practice of IHL’s temporal scope during NIAC. Following from this analysis, the fourth  section proposes an alternative ‘functional approach for determining IHL’s threshold of termination during NIAC, and demonstrates the utility of the ‘functional approach’ over existing approaches by exploring its practical application to specific examples from the hostilities regime and the protections regime during NIAC.