Criminal Risk Assessment PDF

Instructions No directly quoted material may be used in this project paper. Resources should be summarized or paraphrased with appropriate in-text and Resource page citations. Project 2 PPT presentation At several points along the flowchart of the criminal justice system professionals are required to make judgments as to the likelihood an individual will commit a criminal act or another criminal act. For instance: Pre-trial release - Is the person who has merely been accused of a crime such a danger to the community that they must remain confined while awaiting trial? Post-Conviction sentencing - Is this person a viable candidate for supervision under probation or is they likely to commit another criminal act? Correctional classification - What institutional environment (level of confinement, program availability, etc.) is most appropriate for this individual for their safety as well as that of staff and other inmates? Release to comm

CRIMINAL RISK ASSESSMENT

INTRODUCTION
• Risk assessment in the criminal justice system tends to
answer the question:
“What is the possibility that someone who has
committed a crime will reoffend?”
• Risk assessment tools are majorly used by
probation officers, psychiatrists, psychologists
among others to assess the risk of criminal
offending violent offending and sexual offending
and to recommend whether an offender should be
placed in long - term psychiatric care.

FORM OF RISK
ASSESSMENT
• There are two major forms of risk assessment; structured and
unstructured. Structured risk assessment has gained popularity over
the years since studies show that unstructured risk assessments have
often proved to give wrong results since they are confined to only
professional expertise. (Kamorowsk et.al., 2018) In this paper, we
shall discuss two structured risk assessment tools which involve:
• Actuarial Decision making tool ;and
• Structured Professional judgment tool

RISK ASSESSMENT
TOOLS
ACTUARIAL DECISION MAKING TOOL
• Actuarial decision making involves the application of
algorithms, equations and decision rules to a set of
combined risk factors so as to arrive at predictive
decision. This is a tool that has been majorly used in
coming up with conclusive predictions in the field of
psychology.

STRUCTURED PROFESSIONAL
JUDGEMENT TOOL
This tool is an improved version of the
actuarial decision making tool. It involves
providing operational definitions and coding
rules for a set of risk factors and coming up
with a professional judgment in making the
final decision.('Violence Risk Assessment -
Iresearchnet' (Psychology 2020) <
http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/forensic-
psychology/violence-risk-assessment/>
accessed 17 April 2020)

RISK ASSESSMENTS IN RELATION
TO THE POPULATION OF THE
OFFENDERS
ACTUARIAL DECISION MAKING TOOL
• In relation to the targeted population, this risk
assessment tool focuses on sexual offenders. Two
major issues arise out of this;
THE purpose; and
THE validity of the instruments used.

ACTURIAL DECISION
MAKING TOOL CONT.
With regards to purpose, the instrument has to outline the
information of the examinee, the criminal offence, the
design as well as a summarized interview.
On the other hand, the instrument ought to exhibit predictive
validity that involve longitudinal research whereby repeated
observations of the same variables are done over short and
long periods of time. (Vincent et al.,n.d.)

STRUCTURED PROFESSIONAL
JUDGEMENTS
This is majorly used on adolescent sexual offenders.
The main specialized assessment in this is the Structured
Assessment of Violence Risk in youth (SAVRY). It has a
systematic order where it first differentiates violent and
non violent offenders. Thereafter, predicts violent and
non violent recidivism over a 12-month follow up period
and afterwards releases the results after a professional
judgment is made.(Lawing et al., 2017)

VALIDITY AND
RELIABILITY
• Over the years, actuarial decision making has been used
historically by various professions. It is an improved
version of clinical risk assessment. However with time,
it has lost its relevance since it generally relies on
selecting risk factors statistically which is a general
method and may give dubious results.
• How do we remedy this?

VALIDITY AND
RELIABILITY CONT.
• This has been cured by cross validation, however, it has still proven
not to give conclusive results. Also, it heavily relies on time -
invariant risk factors that are of less relevance. With time there has
been a great shift to structured professional judgment. This is because,
the latter is an imitation of the former with exceptions of its
downsides and an addition of professional judgment making it have a
higher preference to the former. .('Violence Risk Assessment -
Iresearchnet' (Psychology 2020) <
http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/forensic-psychology/violence-
risk-assessment/> accessed 17 April 2020)

CASE STUDIES
STRUCTURED PROFESSIONAL JUDGEMENTS
• A 5-YEAR FOLLOW UP STUDY ON MALE JUVENILE
OFFENDERS IN HUNAN PROVINCE, CHINA
Objective
• The main objective of the study was to assess whether this risk
assessment tool could be used to predict violence reoffending in Chinese
Male Juvenile Offenders as well as determining which high risk factors
are majorly associated with violent recidivism.
Facts
• 246 juvenile offenders were recruited and interviews done together with
their legal guardians. Information of other arrests. charges and
convictions that happened 5 years after their release were collected from
the police records.

Findings
Out of the 246 juveniles, 63 of them were rearrested over other
violent offences that happened in the 5 year follow up.17 were
reported to have negative attitude, 18 with impulsivity and 20
with anger management problems.
Conclusion
The results conclusively explained the 25.0% of violence
offending in the province. It was also quite clear that the
structured professional judgment tool can be used to report on
the development and evaluation of effective violence risk
assessment ways to manage male juvenile offenders.(Zhou et
al., 2017)

ACTUARIAL DECISION
MAKING
• There have been very few recent case studies with regards to actuarial
decision making since it has lost its relevance over the years. The few
available are inconclusive. However, the writer retraces his own case
study of the Dan Family.
Objective
• The objective was whether a child of seven years should be returned to
middle class parents with few risk indicators.
Facts
• The parents had abused their youngest baby who was blind and had low
development. However both parents presented themselves as intelligent
and articulate people with no background of substance abuse and anti-
social behavior. Chloe was living with her aunt as a result of the
mistreatment.

Findings
It was not possible to effectively assess the case since the
parents were in denial of child abuse yet evidence clearly
showed that they mistreated their children. American
research showed that some parents selectively abused their
children and the same children retracted using triggers that
they possessed. However, this was later found out not to be
relevant to the case study.
Conclusion
It was concluded that more harm could occur if Chloe was
withdrawn from her family than if she was returned. With
time, it was realized that the problems reduced quite
significantly and their youngest child began adopting to
normal growing habits of children. (Lenning,2005)

COMPARISON OF THE RISK
ASSESSMENT TOOLS
• As earlier mentioned, the aforementioned tools have various
similarities as well as differences.
• The actuarial decision making was developed before the structured
professional decision making tool.
• As time went by, it was discovered that the actuarial decision making
tool did not yield good results and thus a better tool had to be
developed.
• This gave rise to the development of the structured professional
decision making tool, which is an improved version of the actuarial
decision making tool.

SIMILARITIES
• Both tools rely on a set of combined risk factors and get support
from empirical means. Empirical means refer to those that are
added independently to the combined risk factors while coming up
with a conclusive decision.
• Apart from that, both tools provide operational definitions and
coding rules for a set of risk factors.

DIFFERENCES
• Inasmuch as they have particulars that are common to them, they also have
a few differences, which involve:
• Whereas the actuarial decision making tool relies on matters that are of
less importance to violent risk management such as time - invariant risk
factors, the structured professional judgment involves time - varying risk
factors that provides assessment of the possibility of future violence as
well as facilitate the risk reduction and prevention of future violence.
• Also, the actuarial decision making tools rely on algorithms from a
particular sample which may produce poor results while the structured
professional judgment allows for professional judgment towards the end of
the risk assessment process. .('Violence Risk Assessment - Iresearchnet'
(Psychology 2020) < http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/forensic-
psychology/violence-risk-assessment/> accessed 17 April 2020)

CONCLUSION
• It is quite clear that risk assessment tools play a major role in
determining offenders' risk and potential for future recidivism.
They help in ensuring that professional judgments made
concerning the probability of a future criminal behavior is accurate
and precise. Also, the use of structured risk assessment tools have
helped minimize inaccurate predictions that could have resulted
from bias if the risk assessment tools were not used. It is worth
noting that the risk assessment tools are many and more are being
innovated for the betterment of criminal law.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
•Kamorowsk, J., Schreuder, M., de Ruiter, C., Jelicic, M., & Ask, K.(2020). Risk
Assessment Tools and Criminal Offending. The Inquisitive Mind,(9).1-3.
Retrieved 17 April 2020.
•Lawking, K., Childs , K., Frick,P., & Vincent, G. (2017). Ude of structured
professional judgement by probation officers to assess risk for recividivism in
adolescent offenders. Psychological Assessment,29(6),652-663.
https://doi.org//10.1037/pas0000414
•Lennings,C.(2005). Risk Assessment in care and Protection: The case for actuarial
approaches. Australiaan E-journal for the advancement of mental health,4(1), 27-
36 https://doi.org/10.5172/jamh.4.1.27
•Vincent,G., Guy,L., & Grisso, T. Risk Assessment in Juvenile Justice
•Violence Risk Assessment – IResearchNet. Psychology. (2020) Retrieved 17 April
2020, from
http://psychology.iresearchnrt.com/forensic-psychology/violence-risk-assessment/
•Zhou,J., Witt,K.,Cao, X., Chen,C., & Wang, X.(2017). Predicting reoffending
Using the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY): A 5- Year
Follow- Up Study of Male Juvenile Offenders in Hunan Province, China. PLOS
ONE, 12(1), e0169251. http://doi.org/10/1371/journal.pone.0169251