Risk Assessment Tools

Risk Assessment Tools

Risk Assessment Tools

Introduction

Whenever a serious or violent crime is committed, the 'risk factor' or the actual risk posed by the offender after his/her release from any correctional facility has to be closely assessed by the justice officials and those in the police service. However, the need for risk assessment does not stop with the release of an offender, the probability that an offender will re offend while confined or fail to comply with post release requirements etc, is also a real possibility. Many tools have been developed to carry out risk factor assessment of such offenders, which can be divided into two broad categories, the clinical or actuarial.

Through these tools, risk assessment can be performed based upon which the sentence of a high risk offender can be kept in custody for a longer period, or be kept under close surveillance in comparison to low risk offenders. Individuals with a record of serious crimes or violent offences may be labelled as 'dangerous offenders' and be confined for an indefinite period of time (Craig et al, 2004, pp 7). Therefore, in order to assess an offender as high or low risk is not a definite science that is it is not necessary that these individuals will commit other crimes for sure. Even so, despite the limitations within risk assessment, it is used to differentiate between criminals who are expected to re offend and those who would refrain from committing any future offences, to an extent (Craig et al, 2004, pp 8).

Discussion

Formal Methods of Risk Assessment

As mentioned above, there are two formalised methods of risk assessment which can be categorised into clinical or actuarial. Clinical methods of assessments are the professional opinions of psychiatrists and psychologists whose expertise is based upon a holistic approach which takes into account biological, psychological and social factors as well as well as any mental illnesses or personality traits which can be related to offending. The actuarial method requires a vast amount of historical data to be gathered which would indicate the likeliness of the offender to re offend. Static and dynamic tools of risk assessment both can be used to predict the likelihood of re offending as well. Nevertheless, dynamic and static risk assessment tools have many differences as well as similarities, along with weaknesses and strengths (Craig et al, 2004, pp 8).

Static Assessments

Static factors are those which do not change over the period of time, like the offender's escape history, prior crimes, violence of the offence etc, are considered as static factors. According to Van Voorhis and colleagues (2007), a number of instruments have been proved as valid which are based upon static factors and can be used to effectively predict offender behaviour or misconduct while they are institutionalised (Van Voorhis et al, 2007). Conversely, recent research has proved that such instruments are limited in their predictions as they do not include female prisoners and are only to be used on male prisoners (Van Voorhis et al, 2008, pp ...