Unguided Clinical and Actuarial Assessment of Re-offending Risk: A Direct Comparison with Sex Offenders in Denmark

Abstract

Meta-analyses suggest that actuarial risk assessments outperform unguided clinical judgment for prediction of recidivism in criminal offenders. However, there is a lack of direct comparisons of the predictive accuracy of clinical judgment and actuarial risk scales for sexual offenders. We followed up 121 male sex offenders (> or =18 years) subjected to pre-trial forensic psychiatric assessment in Denmark in 1978-1992 (mean post-detainment time = 16.4 years) to compare the predictive validity of unstructured clinical judgment of recidivism risk with that of the well-established Static-99 (Hanson and Thornton, Law and Human Behavior 24:119-136, 2000) and an extension of the Static-99, the Static-2002 (Hanson and Thornton, Notes on the development of Static-2002 (Rep. No. 2003-01), Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Ottawa, Canada, 2003). The predictive accuracy of unguided judgment did not exceed chance for any sexual, severe sexual or any violent (sexual or non-sexual) reconviction (AUCs of the ROC curve = 0.52, 95%CI = 0.41-0.63; 0.50, 95%CI = 0.34-0.67; and 0.57, 95%CI = 0.40-0.73, respectively). In contrast, all three outcomes were predicted significantly better than chance by the Static-99 (AUC = 0.62, 95%CI = 0.52-0.72; 0.72, 95%CI = 0.59-0.84; and 0.71, 95%CI = 0.56-0.86) and the Static-2002 (AUC = 0.67, 95%CI = 0.57-0.77; 0.69, 95%CI = 0.56-0.83; and 0.70, 95%CI = 0.55-0.86). Static-99 outperformed clinical judgment for sexual recidivision (chi(2) = 5.11, df = 1, p < .05). The Static-2002 was significantly more accurate for the prediction of any sexual recidivism as compared to unguided clinical judgment but its advantage fell just short of statistical significance for severe sexual recidivism (chi(2) = 3.56, df = 1, p = 0.06). When tested for recidivism within 2 years, none of the three prediction methods yielded results significantly better than chance for any outcome. This direct trial of the unguided clinical method argues against its continued use for risk assessment of sexual offenders.

Police Officers’ Perceptions of a Sex Offender Registration Scheme: Identifying and Responding to Risk

“…Common complaints include the tools being too narrow in scope, ineffective for women, young and online offenders (Nash, 2016), limited in their reliability and validity, neglectful of dynamic risk factors and limited in the access they provide to those professionals who are more capable of assessing risk (Powell et al, 2014b). Despite these shortcomings, it is argued that unstructured professional judgements are less accurate in determining risk compared to structured risk assessment tools (Bengtson & Långstr€ om, 2007), and as such that risk assessment tools are necessary for differentiating between offenders according to their level of risk (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2009).…”

Long-Term Violent Reoffending Following Forensic Psychiatric Treatment: Comparing Forensic Psychiatric Examinees and General Offender Controls

“…Similarly, Coid and co-workers (22) reminded that studies of FP patients require sufficient sample size and statistical power to quantify long-term reoffending risks following psychiatric treatment and identify those at highest risk and, specifically, address violent re-offending in FP patients with one or more violent offences at baseline. Beyond a few exceptions (22–25), studies of violent offenders rarely investigated violence risk as multifaceted constructs, including also information on the imminence, severity, and recurrence of violent reoffending, although these aspects might be particularly helpful to forensic psychiatry clinicians (7).…”

Postmodernism and criminological thought: ‘Whose science? Whose knowledge?’

“…There is an immense and enduring psychological literature in relation to risk assessment and risk management (for example see Beech and Ward, 2004;Bengtson and Långström, 2007). Essentially the literature is underpinned by foundationalist assumptions, and is concerned with developing more accurate means of predicting the likelihood that a convicted offender will commit another offence.…”

“…However, the actuarial tendency in assessing offenders is strong within a broad 'community protection' approach (Kemshall. 2008) and the research literature continues to indicate that a pure actuarial approach is more accurate in predicting re-offending (Bengtson and Långström, 2007). A key feature of much of the psychological literature on risk and risk assessment is its 'scientific' and, therefore, inaccessible (to the lay reader) language.…”