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ABSTRACT
The assessment of risk of recidivism in sexual offenders is fundamental to clinical practice. It is widely accepted that, compared with actuarial measures of risk, unaided clinical judgment has generally been found to be of low reliability. Consequently, the literature has shown a surge in actuarial measures. However, a major difficulty in assessing risk in sex offenders is the low base rate, leading to an increased likelihood of making a false positive predictive error. To overcome this, risk assessment studies are increasingly using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC), which displays the relationship between level of risk and decision choice. This note summarises the methodological issues in measuring predictive accuracy in assessing risk of reoffending in sexual offenders, and identifies from the literature both static and dynamic risk factors associated with sexual offence recidivism.
Introduction
Accurate assessments of levels of risk posed by sexual offenders are in high demand, as decisions on whether an offender should be released into the community can have severe consequences for both the offender and the public. Public protection panels have recently been set up in the UK to clarify risk communication in a multidisciplinary environment where decisions of risk and management are made accountable. It is with this emphasis that probation services are increasingly turning to forensic psychologists for consultation on aspects of management, treatment and risk assessment procedures (Craig et al, 1999). In order to increase validity in the decisionmaking process, forensic practitioners are encouraged to use empirically derived actuarial risk instruments.
The debate on the accuracy of clinical judgement versus the actuarial approach is not a new one (Grubin, 1997; 1999). Unaided clinical judgements from clinicians about an offender's level of risk have generally been found to be less reliable (Hanson & Bussiere, 1996; McNeil etal, 1998; Mulvey & Lidz, 1998; Hood et al, 2002) than actuarial measures, and can be enhanced by using systematic/structured risk assessment approaches (Bonta et al, 1996; Janus & Meehl, 1997; Monahan, 1996; Dolan & Doyle, 2000). One of the major criticisms of clinical judgement is the apparent tendency and bias towards over-prediction (Hagen, 1997; Steadman, 1987; Hood etal, 2002), falsely predicting recidivism. In response to the clinical/actuarial debate, the literature has shown a surge in the number of empirically...