Risk Assessment Flashcards
Hazard definition
Possible outcomes of doing anything with the potential to result in harm
Risk definition
The probability of an adverse event occurring
Risk and Harm (Hart et al, 2003; Logan, 2014)
Risk - the likelihood of an adverse event happening
Harm - The impacts of the adverse event
Two models of risk assessment (Davis, 1996)
Risk taking model - Rights
Risk minimisation model - Control
Harm definition
Efforts to minimise harm will have significant costs in areas such as rights and participation.
Risk Approaches
- Likelihood of all possible outcomes
- Likelihood on the basis of a sample of past outcomes
- Estimation of likelihood of events
Clinical Assessment
An individual and unstructured assessment.
Meehl (1959)
Clinical assessments cause poor reliability and poor validity
Actuarial Assessments
Statistical estimators of risk based on a number of defined predictors.
This has good reliability and good validity.
Risk Matrix 2000
Actuarial assessment intended for males aged 18+ that have commit a sexual offence. Uses simple factual information about offender’s past history to divide them into categories
What did Step 1 of the Risk Matrix 2000 assess?
Age, sexual appearances and criminal appearances
Step 1 Risk Matrix 2000 Categorisation
0 - Low
1-2 - Medium
3-4 - High
5-6 - Very High
Step 2 Risk Matrix 2000 Aggravating Factors
Male victim of sexual offence, stranger victim of sex offence, single (never been married), no contact sex offence.
Step 3 - Revised Risk Category
2 or 3 aggravating factors increase by 1 risk category, 4 aggravating factors increase by 2 risk categories.
Structured Clinical Judgement Approach (Monahan et al, 2001)
Based on good clinical practice
- Multiple methods
- Multiple sources
- Include dynamic and static factors
- Explicit evaluation of information accuracy
- Explicitly time limited
SVR-20
Assessment of risk for sexual violence in adult sex offenders.
SVR-20 Psychosocial Adjustment
Types of sexual deviation:
- Victim of child abuse
- Psychopathy
- Major Mental Illness
- Substance Abuse problems
- Suicidal/homicidal ideation
- Relationship problems
- Employment problems
- Past nonsexual violent offences
- Past non-violent offences
- Past supervision failure
SVR-20 Sexual Offences
- Multiple offence types
- Physical harm to victims
- Uses weapons or threats of death
- Escalation in frequency/severity
- Extreme minimisation/denial of offences
- Attitudes that support or condone offences
SVR-20 Risk management
Offender is also assessed on whether they have a negative attitude towards intervention.
All these factors are then separated into low, medium and high.
Harris and Rice (1997)
Static controls - things that are legally there to manage risk like sex offenders saying when they changed offence
Situational controls - where the individual is housed by the police force
Pharmacological controls - medicating the offender for any mental health issues
Interpersonal controls - visits from police officers to the offenders
