Strengths and limitations of actuarial prediction of criminal reoffence in a German prison sample: A comparative study of LSI-R, HCR-20 and PCL-R

Is psychopathy elevated among criminal offenders who are under preventive detention pursuant to Section 66 of the German Penal Code?

“…The mean PCL-R value in the Aix la (Molto, Poy, & Torrubia, 2000), 15.3 in an English study (Coid et al, 2009), in Switzerland just 12 (Endrass, Rossegger, Urbaniok, Laubacher, & Vetter, 2008), and 12 in a German sample of prisoners in West Berlin (Dahle, 2006).…”

Risk assessment and treatment in Dutch forensic psychiatry

“…Structured tools for violence risk assessment originate from North America, but are now in use in many other jurisdictions. Research from several different European countries supports the predictive accuracy of the HCR-20 and the SVR-20, and related instruments (Sweden, HCR-20;Belfrage, Fransson & Strand, 2000;United Kingdom, SVR-20;McPherson, 2003;Switzerland, SVR-20: Dietiker, Dittman & Graf, 2007;Germany, HCR-20;Dahle, 2006). Nowadays, as a general procedure, Dutch forensic psychiatric institutions perform structured risk assessments of 'TBS patients' and base their judgements on these structured methods.…”

The Problem of Risk Assessment: Can Better Crime Prognoses Reduce Recidivism?

“…Internationally known examples for these instruments of assumed high objectivity, reliability, and validity are the Psychopathy Checklist (Hare 1991), PCL-SV (short version) and PCL-R (revised), Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R, Andrews and Bonta 1995), the Historical Clinical Risk (HCR-20, Douglas et al 2013) which is used to predict the risk of violent delinquency, the Sexual Violence Risk (SVR-20, Boer et al 1997), Rapid Risk Assessment for Sexual Offense Recidivism (RRASOR, Hanson 1997), Static-99 (Harris et al 2003), Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG, Quinsey et al 2006), and the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG, Quinsey et al 2006). Crime forecast is based primarily on these kinds of actuarial assessment instruments in the Anglo-American countries while most European countries, particularly in Germany, regard them as helpful, but not sufficient enough for crime prognosis (Dahle 2006). They suggest that the behavioral instruments should complement a series of other carefully and clinically informed appraisals and should not be used as a substitute for them when making an assessment about a prisoner.…”