Psychopathy is described as a severe form of a personality disorder, which manifests itself in an antisocial, impulsive lifestyle and manipulative and egocentric interaction with the environment....Show morePsychopathy is described as a severe form of a personality disorder, which manifests itself in an antisocial, impulsive lifestyle and manipulative and egocentric interaction with the environment. Recent research has shown that psychopathy is associated with many risk factors. Important associated risk factors are ethnic background and having police contacts. According to several studies, ethnic background is an important risk factor for developing psychopathy, whereas psychopathy is a risk factor for police contacts. The role of psychopathic traits as a mediator between ethnic background and police contacts is researched. In the research, 390 twelve to eighteen year-olds with a Dutch or Moroccan ethnic background cooperated, of which 210 had a Dutch background and 180 a Moroccan background. Eight prevocational education schools (“vmbo”) and one secondary vocational education (“mbo”) school (1st grade) cooperated in the research. The participants filled out questionnaires. To measure the interaction between ethnic background, psychopathic traits and contact with the police, logistic regression is applied. There is a significant relation between psychopathic traits and police contacts. Participants with more psychopathic traits are more likely to have police contacts. The relations between ethnic background and police contacts, ethnic background and psychopathic traits could not be confirmed in this study. There is no significant difference between participants with a Dutch or Maroccan ethnic background in relation to psychopathic traits, nor in relation to police contacts. No mediation model was found, as the relation between ethnic background and contact with the police, controlled for psychopathic traits, is not significant. It can thus be concluded that psychopathic traits is an important factor, however it cannot explain the relationship between ethnic background and contact with the police.Show less