Forensic Psychology - Lecture 8 - Risk Assessment

Facors related to desistance

-Age -Employment -Marital relationships

Unstructured Clinical Judgment

-Decisions are characterized by professional discretion and lack of guidelines -Subjective -No specific risk factor -No rules about how risk decisions should be made

Structured Professional Judgment

-Decisions are guided by predetermined list of risk factors derived from research literature -Judgement of risk level is based on professional judgement -Diverse group of professional

Dispositional Risk Factors

-Demographics (age, gender) -Personality characteristics (compulsivity, psychopathy)

Four kinds of Important Risk Factors

-Dispositional -Historical -Clinical -Contextual

Female specific risk factors

-History of self-injury -Poor self-esteem

Risk Assessments are conducted at three major decision points

1) Pretrial 2) Sentencing 3) Release

Heuristics

A simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgment and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier, but more error-prone than algorithms

Two kinds of Dynamic Risk Factors

Acute Stable

Predictions are difficult when

Base rates are too high or too low

Six Civil Settings

Civil commitment Child Protection Immigration laws School and labour regulations Duty to Warm Limits of confidentiality

Actuarial Prediction

Decisions based on risk factors that are selected and combined based on empirical and statistical evidence; calculates risk by comparing characteristics of the individual to those of individuals for whom we know behavior; evidence favors this over unstructured clinical judgment

5 Judgement Errors and Biases

Heuristics Illusory Correlation Ignore Base Rates Reliance on salient (significant) or unique cues Overconfidence in judegment

Risk

Interaction among offender characteristics and situation Degree of uncertainty.

Contextual Risk Factors

Lack of social support to help individual in their day to day life Easy access to weapons Easy access to victims

Three weaknesses of Research

Limited to number of risk factors How criterion variable is measured How criterion variable is defined

Define Risk Factor

Measurable feature of an individual tat predicts the behaviour of interest (e.g criminal behaviour or violence)

Dr. James Grigson

Nicknamed "Dr. Death" or "The Hanging Shrink" He was a forensic psychologist in Dallas who used unstructured clinical judgment. He testified in over 167 trials where the culprit was put to death because Dr. Death had labeled them a sociopath and they were going to commit another crime if set free. He was expelled from his professional association for claims of 100% accuracy in predicting violence

Historical Risk Factors

Past antisocial behaviour Age of onset of antisocial behaviour Childhood history of maltreatment Past supervision failure, escape, or institutional malajustment

Ignore Base Rates

People tend to discount the importance of prior odds when making decisions

Risk assessment has two components

Prediction Management

Desistance

Process of ceasing to engage in criminal behaviour There is literally research on why offenders stop committing crime

___ Outweighs _____

Public safety outweighs solicitor-client privilege

Base Rates

Represents the percentage of people within a given population who commit a criminal or violent act.

Risk is viewed as..

Risk is viewed as a range. Probabilities change across time.

Two types of Predictors

Static Risk Factors (historical, factors that cannot be changed) Dynamic Risk Factor (fluctuate overtime, factors can be changed)

Clinical Risk FactoRs

Substance use Mental Disorders (schizophrenia or affective disorders) "Threat / Control Override" (TCO) symptoms

Illusory Correlation

The tendency to see relationships, or correlations, between events that are actually unrelated

There are more ______ for men and women

There are more similarities in risk factors for men and women than differences

Four types of prediction Outcomes

True Positive: Predicted to reoffend, and does. True Negative: Predicted to not reoffend, and does not. False Positive: Predicted to reoffend, and does not False Negative: predicted to not reoffend, and does.

Gender Differences in Criminality

Women engage in less crime Women reoffend at lower rates Childhood victimization is more prevalent with female offenders Mental disorders are more prevalent with female offenders

Easier to predict __

easier to predict frequent vs. infrequent events.

Each prediction outcome

has a different consequence for offender or society

False positives tend to occur..

with low base rates.