Article2002

Risk Assessment: What is Being Predicted by Actuarial Prediction Instruments?

102 citations0/0 files storedInternational Journal of Forensic Mental Health

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Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending Crime Patterns and Interventions Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis

Abstract

There is an ongoing debate between actuarial and clinical approaches to assessment of risk for violent recidivism where previous studies on predictive validity are said to have yielded results favouring actuarial assessments. However, these studies have all used a dichotomous outcome (recidivism “yes” or “no”) as the criterion variable. In order to not only predict but also manage recidivism risk and prevent future violence, there is a need to elaborate on the criterion variable in actuarial assessments and also consider the imminence, frequency, nature, and severity of potential reoffending. We revisited a database of actuarial risk assessments referring to a nationwide 5-year cohort of all adult men released from prison after having served a prison sentence for sexual offending. Sexually recidivistic behaviors were coded for individuals sexually reconvicted during an average follow-up of 6 years. Actuarial procedures had overall areas under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of .73 and .75 concerning any sexual reoffending. However, when the procedures were reevaluated using various outcome measures, the predictive validity ranged from AUC of .40 to .94. Actuarial risk assessment schemes worked well for imminent and less severe reoffending but were less accurate concerning repeated and injurious sexual reoffenses, and were of no value at all to discriminate intrafamilial recidivists from nonrecidivists. Replication of these preliminary findings would suggest that whereas actuarial approaches are optimized to predict the common (but less severe) occurrences of sexual reoffending, they might be of less value to inform on the assessment of risk for the more clinically worrying, severe (but less common) sexual recidivism.

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References

2021The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.1998Violent offenders: Appraising and managing risk.2000Violent Offenders: Appraising and Managing Risk 2000Improving risk assessments for sex offenders: A comparison of three actuarial scales.1994Assessing predictions of violence: Being accurate about accuracy.1998The role of psychopathy in assessing risk for violence: Conceptual and methodological issues 2001Evaluating the Predictive Accuracy of Six Risk Assessment Instruments for Adult Sex Offenders 1997Prediction versus management models relevant to risk assessment: The importance of legal decision-making context.

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2006Low base rates limit expert certainty when current actuarials are used to identify sexually violent predators: An application of Bayes's theorem.2011A person-oriented perspective on sexual offenders, offending trajectories, and risk of recidivism: A new challenge for policymakers, risk assessors, and actuarial prediction?2003Assessment of Criminal Recidivism Risk with Adolescents who have Offended Sexually 2007Unguided Clinical and Actuarial Assessment of Re-offending Risk: A Direct Comparison with Sex Offenders in Denmark

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