chapter 10- risk assessment 

what is risk assessment ?

  • risk is viewed as a range/probability estimate
  • interaction between characteristics, background, and situation

civil settings

  • civil commitment
  • child protection
  • immigration laws
  • school and labour regulations
  • duty to warn

criminal settings

  • risk assessment is conducted at major decision points which are pretrial, sentencing, and release
  • public safety may outweigh solicitor client privilege if there is clear, serous and imminent danger
  • particularly important in some sentencing decisions such as dangerous offender designation

base rate problem

  • percentage of people in a population who commit a criminal act
  • low base rates can increase the amount of false positive decisions

baxtron and dixon studies

  • few people reoffend
  • illustrated inaccuracy of risk assessment predictions
  • clinical expertise categorized as “flipping a coin”
  • still used in Canadian and US courts
  • predictions are not always wrong just most of the time

unstructured clinical judgment

  • professional discretion and lack of guid lines
  • subjective meaning no risk factors and no rules about how risk decisions should be made
  • high variability between clinicians and cases

actuarial prediction

  • risk factors are selected and combined using empirical associations which are based on studies of offenders
  • more accurate than unstructured clinical judgment
  • actuarial risk instruments include only static risk factors and cannot update risk based on behavioural change

structured professional judgment

  • guided by predetermined risk factors derived from research
  • judgment of risk level is based on professional judgement
  • accuracy of approach still unclear

risk factors

  • measurable feature that predicts the behavior of interest
  • types : static or dynamic
  • categories :
    • historical : childhood/background
    • dispositional: male/female, traits, criminal attitudes
    • clinical : substance use, mental health
    • contextual: the environment, access to weapons, proximity to victims, do they have a job
  • two basic findings
    • factors apply across all types of recidivism
    • factors apply regardless of mental disorder

female offenders

  • gender differences in criminality
    • engage in less crime
    • arrested for different crimes
    • receive higher rates of conditional release
    • childhood victimization is more prevalent
    • mental disorders are more prevalent
    • more recidivism due to substance abuse
  • more similarities in risk factors for men and women than differences
  • gender specific factors
    • history of self injury
    • self esteem problems

protective factors

  • mitigate or reduce likelihood of negative outcomes such as delinquency or aggression
  • help explain why people with risk factors fo not offend
  • includes:
    • prosocial environment
    • strong social supports
    • employment stability
    • positive social orientation
    • strong attachment
    • intelligence

moderating effects

  • categorical: gender , ethnicity
  • continuous: number of treatment sessions

mediating effects

  • clinical interventions : medication, intrusive measures
  • pariental violence
  • intervening variables that initiate risk

issues with instruments

  • only provide probability statements about group data/difficult to apply at individual level
  • measures may not generalize to other countries/populations
  • uses language that can be interpreted by decision makers
  • evaluators don’t agree on categorization of risk levels

desistance from crime

  • process of ceasing to engage in criminal behavior
  • relating factors:
    • age
    • employment
    • marital relationships