Risk Assessment Flashcards
Why is risk viewed as a range?
Probabilities can change, interaction of offender characteristics and situations.
What are the 2 components of risk assessment?
Prediction and management.
What are some examples of risk assessment in civil settings?
1) Civil commitment: Individual has serious mental health or substance problems- are they gonna harm self/others, get treatment etc.
2) Child protection- when, what, time focus, parenting assessment
3) Immigration laws- risk assessment when sending back to dangerous places
4) School and labour regulations- safety issues, who is most likely to be harmed
5) Duty to warn- citizen has a duty to report harm situations.
When are risk assessments conducted in criminal settings?
At 3 major decision points (pretrial, sentencing, and release). Public safety outweighs soliciter-client privilege when there is clear, serious, and imminent danger.
What is a true negative (correct) decision?
When the person is predicted not to reoffend and they do not reoffend.
What is a false positive (incorrect) prediction?
Person is predicted to reoffend but they do not.
What is a false negative (incorrect) prediction?
Person is predicted not to reoffend, but they reoffend.
What is a true negative (correct) prediction?
Person is predicted to reoffend and does reoffend.
What is a base rate?
The percentage of people in a given population who commit a criminal act.
Why are low base rates a problem?
They can increase false positive decisions- vary based on the group being studied, what is being predicted, and the length of the follow up monitoring period.
What was found in the Baxtrom and Dixon cases?
Base rates for violence are low but false positive rates are high in subgroups of people with mental health problems leading to them being kept in facilities indefinitely.
What are some of the weaknesses of research conducted on risk assessment methods?
1) Limited number of risk factors studied
2) How criterion variable is measured
3) How criterion variable is defined (ex: how is social support being measured and defined)
What is the representativeness heuristic?
Is this situation similar to something else I’ve experienced- mental shortcuts which speed up the decision making process but which can be wrong.
What are illusory correlations?
When you think something is related and it is not.
What are some other judgement errors and biases aside from the representativeness heuristic an illusory correlations?
Ignoring base rates, relying on salient and unique cues which aren’t predictive, overrating our abilities to judge.
What is unstructured clinical judgement?
Decisions that are characterized by professional discretion and lack of guidelines. Subjective with no specific risk factors and no rules about how risk decisions should be made.
What was the case of Barefoot v Estelle?
Barefoot was convicted of murdering a police officer and had 5 prior arrests. Was nonviolent but diagnosed as a sociopath by 2 crown psychiatrists (neither examined him or had significant contact but both viewed him as high risk). Dr. Grigson determined predictive accuracy was at 100% and absolute even though there was o ther testimony that even trained experts had poor accuracy. He was sentenced to death.
Who was James Grigson (or Dr. Death?)
Deemed 50 cases as 100% high risk using unstructured clinical judgement- was then expelled from the professional association.
