Progress in Violence Risk Assessment and Communication: Hypothesis versus Evidence

Abstract

We draw a distinction between hypothesis and evidence with respect to the assessment and communication of the risk of violent recidivism. We suggest that some authorities in the field have proposed quite valid and reasonable hypotheses with respect to several issues. Among these are the following: that accuracy will be improved by the adjustment or moderation of numerical scores based on clinical opinions about rare risk factors or other considerations pertaining to the applicability to the case at hand; that there is something fundamentally distinct about protective factors so that they are not merely the obverse of risk factors, such that optimal accuracy cannot be achieved without consideration of such protective factors; and that assessment of dynamic factors is required for optimal accuracy and furthermore interventions aimed at such dynamic factors can be expected to cause reductions in violence risk. We suggest here that, while these are generally reasonable hypotheses, they have been inappropriately presented to practitioners as empirically supported facts, and that practitioners' assessment and communication about violence risk run beyond that supported by the available evidence as a result. We further suggest that this represents harm, especially in impeding scientific progress. Nothing here justifies stasis or simply surrendering to authoritarian custody with somatic treatment. Theoretically motivated and clearly articulated assessment and intervention should be provided for offenders, but in a manner that moves the field more firmly from hypotheses to evidence.

Time Well Spent: Misery, Meaning, and the Opportunity of Incarceration

“…Research can help sort this out: are positive characteristics like persistence simply the opposite of negative characteristics like low self‐control? (Dickson, Willis and Mather ; Harris and Rice ). Or do they represent different constructs and different continuums for understanding human behaviour?…”

Clinical Risk Assessment-Organizing Information Using Criminological Theory Seems to Work

“…Diagnoses or standard low-level criminological indices like age at 1st crime or number of previous sentences for life-time crimes and an array of similar conventional indices were not associated with the index crime. Another problem is that current risk instruments have little to offer in guiding clinical interventions, particularly for patients with psychoses, serious non-antisocial personality disorders, and "unique" risks Harris & Rice [6].…”

“…An increased risk may be associated with certain but not very common symptoms or signs [6]. Clinical examples of such attributes are reports of sexual or aggressive and sometimes sadistic fantacies which often have an obsession-like taint, like those specified in the Scale of Evil [29].…”

“…The ability to predict rare events (like murder or suicide) is of course much worse. The question is whether risk assessments in its present form are clinically meaningful [6]. In contrast, it appears possible to identify risk in a short perspective with a high AUC using the Broset Violence Checklist [7].…”

The Scale of Evil-Interjudge Reliability and Associations with Predictor Variables

“…We think that those with score 0 should be assessed for violence risks with other available instruments like HCR-20. Those scoring >0 should be scrutinized more in depth -in that way it will be possible to identify "unique" dangerousness profiles, which current instruments cannot do, and institute appropriate risk management interventions [30,31].…”