Background: Structured professional judgement (SPJ) method has been considered as a useful approach to violent risk assessment. However, an unstructured clinical model of violence risk assessment, the Priority Follow-up (PFU) system is employed in Hong Kong. The Historical/Clinical/ Risk Management -20 (HCR-20) is the SPJ instrument that had been most researched but has not been previously validated in a Chinese population. Study design and methods: HCR-20 was completed for 110 discharged general adult or forensic psychiatric patients with a PFU status and also for the same number of demographically matched controls. Violence was determined from case notes at 6-and 12-month after the HCR-20 rating. Results: HCR-20 was rated with acceptable interrater reliability. The predictive validity of the structured final risk judgement was significant, yielding moderate to large effect sizes, for all of the violent outcomes at 6 and 12 months. When compared with the PFU system, the final risk judgement yields no significant differences.