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Class 8 – Risk Assessment

Resources

Important

  • Types of risk assessment measures – The three main approaches to assessing risk: unstructured clinical judgment, actuarial prediction, and structured professional judgment.
  • Risk decisions and errors – The four possible outcomes of a risk prediction model: true positive, true negative, false positive, and false negative.
  • The Central Eight risk factors – The most reliable predictors of future violence and crime, which includes the “Big Four” (history of antisocial behavior, antisocial attitudes, antisocial associates, and antisocial personality pattern) alongside four additional factors.
  • Static versus dynamic risk factors – The distinction between historical, unchangeable factors (e.g., experiencing child maltreatment) and changeable factors (e.g., the ongoing psychological symptoms resulting from maltreatment).
  • Comparison of risk assessment approaches – The specific differences between unstructured clinical judgment, actuarial prediction, and structured professional judgment regarding how they identify, measure, and combine risk factors to produce risk estimates.

Core Concepts

  • Risk Assessment: A process consisting of a prediction component (assessing the probability of future violence) and a management component (developing interventions to reduce that risk).
  • False Positive: An incorrect prediction where a person is predicted to be violent but does not act violently, which often results in unjustly compromising an individual’s rights and liberty.
  • False Negative: An incorrect prediction where a person is predicted to be nonviolent but subsequently acts violently, which directly compromises public safety and future victims.
  • Base Rate Problem: The statistical difficulty in making accurate predictions for very rare events (such as school shootings), which inevitably leads to a high number of false positive errors.
  • Unstructured Clinical Judgment (UCJ): A risk assessment method relying entirely on professional discretion and clinical experience, heavily criticized for its inconsistency, inaccuracy, and susceptibility to overconfidence bias.
  • Actuarial Prediction: A highly structured risk assessment method using predefined rules and statistical models to measure static risk factors and calculate a concrete, numerical probability of reoffending.
  • Structured Professional Judgment (SPJ): A flexible but systematic risk assessment method where evaluators examine predefined static and dynamic risk factors, but use clinical judgment to determine the final risk category (e.g., low, moderate, high).
  • Static Risk Factors: Historical, factual variables that do not change over time, such as age of onset or past criminal convictions.
  • Stable Dynamic Risk Factors: Variables that fluctuate over long periods and can be changed with targeted intervention, such as antisocial attitudes or substance abuse problems.
  • Acute Dynamic Risk Factors: Variables of short temporal duration that change rapidly and often immediately precede an offense, such as extreme intoxication or sudden access to victims.
  • Protective Factors: Positive environmental or psychological elements (e.g., strong social support, prosocial peers, problem-solving skills) that mitigate or reduce the likelihood of an individual engaging in violent acts.
  • Illusory Correlation: The psychological bias of believing that a correlation exists between two events (such as a clinician’s intuitive “bad feeling” and a subject’s actual dangerousness) that in reality are not correlated.

Theories and Frameworks

  • Coping-Relapse Model of Criminal Recidivism: A criminological theory proposing that criminal behavior occurs when an individual experiences an environmental trigger, appraises it with negative emotions, and lacks adequate coping mechanisms to manage the stress.
  • The Central Eight / Big Four: A framework outlining the most robust predictors of criminal behavior, emphasizing that a static history of antisocial behavior is the strongest predictor, heavily supported by dynamic factors like an antisocial personality pattern, attitudes, and associates.

Notable Individuals

  • James Grigson (Dr. Death): A forensic psychiatrist notorious for using unstructured clinical judgment to assert with absolute certainty that defendants would reoffend, heavily influencing capital punishment sentences.
  • R. Karl Hanson: A Canadian researcher who developed widely used actuarial risk-assessment measures, such as the Static-99, for assessing serious and sexual offenders.
  • Tatiana Tarasoff: A victim whose murder led to landmark legal rulings establishing that mental health professionals have a legal and ethical duty to warn and protect potential victims.
  • John Monahan: A prominent researcher who identified main methodological weaknesses in violence prediction research and highlighted the profound flaws of unstructured clinical judgments.