Textbook Terms Chapters 15 (did not get to in class)

Question 1

__________ - A method of predicting violent behavior that systematically combines relevant risk factors (typically using a statistical equation) to calculate an estimate of the probability of violent behavior in the future.

Answer 1

actuarial prediction

Question 2

__________ - A personality disorder involving a pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the ability to commit illegal acts without any subsequent feelings of remorse.

Answer 2

antisocial personality disorder

Question 3

antisocial personality disorder - A personality disorder involving a pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the ability to commit illegal acts without any subsequent feelings of __________ .

Answer 3

remorse

Question 4

__________ -The frequency with which an event occurs in a given population.

Answer 4

base rate

Question 5

__________ - The rate at which offenders in general reoffend. It is substantially lower than what most laypeople and mental health professionals believe.

Answer 5

base rate of reoffense

Question 6

__________ - A law mandating that the personal and private information of known sex offenders be readily available to the public and to the communities in which the offenders reside.

Answer 6

community notification law

Question 7

__________ - Policies that appear to do something about crime but in fact are ineffective, have little to no empirical support, and have unintended negative consequences.

Answer 7

criminal justice theater

Question 8

__________ - A standard for involuntary civil commitment: If a person has threatened to inflict severe bodily harm on himself or herself or on other people, and the threat is deemed a real possibility, then the person may be involuntarily committed.

Answer 8

danger to self or others

Question 9

__________ - A movement beginning in the twentieth century calling for reintegrating mentally ill patients into mainstream society. The idea was to transition away from isolating the mentally ill in hospitals and to release them into the community where mental health services would be provided.

Answer 9

deinstitutionalization

Question 10

__________ - The prosecution of a defendant for a crime for which the defendant has already been tried.

Answer 10

double jeopardy

Question 11

__________ - A duty enunciated by the California supreme court in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California (1976): Psychotherapists have a duty to take “reasonable care” to protect their clients’ identifiable potential victims, such as by notifying the police and/ or the potential victim.

Answer 11

duty to protect

Question 12

__________ - Describes a law making an act illegal or changing the penalty for an offense after the act or offense was committed; such laws are prohibited by the Constitution.

Answer 12

ex post facto (“ after the fact”)

Question 13

__________ - An inaccurate prediction that something will not occur, such as when a person is predicted to not become violent but then does become violent.

Answer 13

false negative

Question 14

__________ - An inaccurate prediction that something will occur, such as when a person is predicted to become violent but then does not become violent.

Answer 14

false positive

Question 15

__________ - A standard used in some states for death penalty decision making: determining whether the defendant is likely to commit criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society.

Answer 15

future dangerousness standard

Question 16

__________ - The extent to which assessment instruments perform outside the original population and outcome on which they were created. In other words, how well the results of a test can be applied to the larger population.

Answer 16

generalizability

Question 17

__________ - Unable to care for oneself or to provide for basic needs such as food and shelter.

Answer 17

gravely disabled

Question 18

__________ - A structured professional judgment instrument that helps mental health clinicians estimate a person’s probability of being violent; based on 20 historical, clinical, and risk-management factors.

Answer 18

Historical Clinical Risk Management Scheme-20 (HCR-20)

Question 19

__________ - Describes risk assessment methods that focus on specific individual characteristics, rather than group attributes, and rely on intuitive, descriptive, and nonmathematical information to form an opinion.

Answer 19

idiographic, qualitative approach

Question 20

__________ - The inability to exert control over one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors.

Answer 20

impulsivity

Question 21

__________ - The decision to place someone in a psychiatric facility for treatment against his or her will.

Answer 21

involuntary civil commitment

Question 22

__________ - The inability of some psychiatric patients to benefit from treatment.

Answer 22

lack of responsiveness to treatment

Question 23

__________ - A 1996 community notification law, requiring states to make personal and private information about known sex offenders available to the public.

Answer 23

Megan’s law

Question 24

__________ - Describes risk assessment methods that focus on group characteristics, rather than on the characteristics of a specific individual, and rely on systematic, statistical means to form an opinion about an individual; conclusions are based on characteristics identified in research on large groups of people and then applied to the specific individual.

Answer 24

nomothetic, quantitative approach

Question 25

__________ - The state’s duty to protect and treat those citizens who cannot care for themselves.

Answer 25

parens patriae power (“ parent of the country” power)

Question 26

__________ - The state’s authority to protect its citizens from dangerous individuals.

Answer 26

police power

Question 27

__________ - Holding someone in jail or in a hospital because he or she might become violent.

Answer 27

preventive detention

Question 28

__________ - A dynamic risk factor in predicting violent behavior. Sometimes it is active (i.e., readily apparent in a person’s thoughts and behavior) and other times it is dormant.

Answer 28

psychiatric symptomatology

Question 29

__________ - A distinctive, extreme form of antisocial disorder characterized by a lack of empathy for others and a lack of remorse for cruel or violent behavior.

Answer 29

psychopathy

Question 30

__________ - Laws allowing for the civil confinement of individuals who are soon to be released from prison and are found likely to commit future acts of sexual violence.

Answer 30

sexually violent predator civil commitment laws (SVP laws)

Question 31

__________ - A risk assessment instrument designed to predict sexual reoffenses.

Answer 31

Sexual Offending Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG)

Question 32

__________ - Risk assessment instruments that are designed to combine the accuracy of actuarial methods with the flexibility of clinical decision making.

Answer 32

structured professional judgment instruments

Question 33

__________ - Ensuring that individuals are not subjected to arbitrary or unreasonable deprivation of their freedom and that their fundamental constitutional rights are not violated; violation of substantive due process is prohibited by the Constitution.

Answer 33

substantive due process

Question 34

__________ - Beliefs— common in schizophrenics— that other people or forces are controlling one’s thoughts or implanting thoughts in one’s mind; a type of dynamic risk factor used in predicting violent behavior.

Answer 34

threat/ control-override symptoms (TCO symptoms)

Question 35

__________ - An accurate prediction that something will not occur, such as when a person is predicted to not become violent and the person indeed does not become violent.

Answer 35

true negative

Question 36

__________ - An accurate prediction that something will occur, such as when a person is predicted to become violent and then does become violent.

Answer 36

true positive

Question 37

__________ - Clinical or experienced-based approaches to prediction of risk in which no rules specify how a clinician should collect and combine information.

Answer 37

unstructured clinical judgment

Question 38

__________ - An actuarial risk assessment instrument constructed to improve predictive accuracy. It was developed on a mentally ill Canadian criminal population to predict recidivism.

Answer 38

Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG)