WEEK 6 Flashcards
Why is there so much controversy over risk assessment?
Controversial practice and one of the most contended in forensic assessment
Questions over who (i.e. profession) should be doing it
History is somewhat hit and miss with real implications
Questions over preventive detention based on past behaviour
Risk assessment precedes threat management
what are the three generations of risk assessment to date?
Clinical judgement
Actuarial judgement
Clinical combined with statistical anchoring
what is de rigueur
is Structured Professional Judgement
what is clinical judgement based on?
Based on the education, training, and experience of the clinician
what is clinical judgement limited by?
Limited by the practitioner’s education, training, and experience
what is problematic about clinical judgement?
high error rate
what was the tendency of clinical judgement?
to over predict
what was the belief surrounding actuarial judgement?
Belief was that the way to overcome the problems with clinical judgement was to use data and research to provide a “general picture” of the reference group risk
what was the poor aspect of actuarial judgement?
These “risk profiles” have been found to be a poor fit to individual cases
in actuarial judgement, what are group norms good and not good for estimating?
group norms are good for estimating what a group is up to but not what the individual is up to
what began Structured Professional Judgement
Owing to the problems with pure clinical and statistical assessment moves were made to base clinical judgement on research. this is known as anchoring
what is the idea of structured professional judgement?
The idea is to weight the clinician’s assessments with research to avoid over prediction
what is the best practice for risk assessment?
structured professional judgement
who mostly does threat assessment and threat managements?
Probably most done by psychologists and psychiatrists because of their training in the behavioural sciences
However, also done by investigators, criminologists, crime analysts, and other professionals
what are some big questions about threat assessment and management?
who should do them
what to do once the assessment is made
where has past practice stopped at?
at the point of the risk/threat assessment
what should the practice of TM and TA be about?
managing any assessed threat
what is the intervention dilemma in TM and TA?
whether you should assess violence and intervene. This is called the intervention dilemma
why is the intervention dilemma a dilemma?
In some cases attempts to intervene may actually make the situation worse (some domestic violence for example) or make no difference at all. but can also improve the situation
what must be assessed when considering intervention?
costs/benefits of the intervention
what is the process of Risk assessment?
- first involvement
- sources of information
- information analysis
- intervention
- monitoring
what happens in the first involvement stage of intervention?
Someone acts in a way their behaviour causes concern to others
what happens in the sources of information stage of intervention?
letters, threats, interactions, mental and psychological history etc
what happens in the information analysis stage or intervention??
look for patterns and associations in the data you have
