Psychology 2032A/B Chapter Notes - Chapter 15: Assault Causing Bodily Harm, Illusory Correlation, Systematic Risk
6 Jun 2018
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Department
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Professor
Risk Assessment
What is Risk Assessment?
• Every day, individuals make judgements about the likelihood of events
• Preditig future iolee has ee desried as oe of the ost ople ad
otroersial issues i ehaioural siee ad la
- Predicts antisocial and violent behaviour
- Risk assessment and predictions remain imperfect
o Can be used to justify the application of severe sanctions or to moderate
extreme penalties
o Identification of the violent recidivist is not infallible
▪ Not at a point where we can achieve a level of prediction free of error
• Prior to 1990s: risk was a dichotomy
- The individual was either dangerous or not dangerous
• Now: risk is viewed as a range
- The individual can vary in degree to which he/she is considered dangerous
o Probabilities change across time
o Interaction among offender characteristics and the situation
• Risk assessment has 2 components:
- Prediction
o Probability of committing future acts
▪ Identifying the risk factors related to this likelihood
- Management
o Development of interventions to manage or reduce the likelihood
▪ Idetifig hih treatet ight redue the idiiduals leel of risk
of what conditions need to be implemented to manage this risk
• The critical fuctio of risk assessets is violece prevention, not violence
predictio – Hart
Risk Assessments: Civil Settings
• Refers to the private rights of individuals and the legal proceedings connected with such
rights
• Civil commitment
- Requires an individual to be hospitalized involuntarily if he/she has a mental illness
and poses a danger to himself or others
- A psychiatrist or psychologist would need to know the probability of violence
associated with various mental illness symptoms and disorders
o In Canada, only psychiatrists can civilly commit someone to a hospital
• Child protection
- Deciding whether to temporarily remove a child from his/her home or to terminate
parental rights
o Based on risk of physical/sexual abuse or neglect
- E. Childres Aid “oiet
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- Professionals need to be familiar with the risk factors that predict child
maltreatment
• Immigration laws
- Prohibit the admission of individuals into Canada if there are reasonable grounds for
believing they will engage in acts of violence or if they pose a risk to the social,
cultural or economic functioning of Canadian society
• School and labour regulations
- Include provisions to prevent any kind of act that would endanger others
• Duty to warn
- Mental health professionals are expected to consider the likelihood that their
patients will act in a violent manner and to intervene to prevent this behaviour
- The Caadia Pshologial Assoiatios Code of Ethis for Pshologists proides
guidelines to deal with a potential dilemma
Risk Assessments: Criminal Settings
• Refers to situations in which an individual has been charged with a crime
- The judge can decide to apply criminal sanctions to adolescent offenders depending
on the age, type of offence and risk level posed by the youth
• Risk assessments conducted at major decision points:
- Pretrial
- Sentencing
- Release
• Public safety outweighs solicitor-liet priilege he there is lear, serious ad
iiet dager
- Similar to doctor-patient confidentiality
o Smith v. Jones – a man told a psychiatrist of his plan to kill many prostitutes
o The psychiatrist was duty bound to disclose to the police and the Crown
• Risk assessment is a critical component of certain kinds of sentencing decisions
- 1947: habitual criminal legislation was introduced and offenders could be sentenced
to an indefinite period of incarceration
- 1977: dangerous offender legislation was enacted that required mental health
professionals to provide an assessment of risk violence
- 1997: made indefinite incarceration the only option is an offender is found to be a
dangerous offender
o A new category was created – long-term offenders
▪ A person must pose a substantial risk for violently reoffending
▪ Risk assessment is a core component of this legislation
• Risk assessment is required for decisions concerning release from correctional and
forensic psychiatric institutions (ex. Parole)
- An offender can apply to the National Parole Board to get early release
o Board members use a variety of sources of information to decide the
likelihood of reoffending
o Most are released on statutory release – but can be denied
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- A patient found not criminally responsible can be released from a psychiatric facility
only if a risk assessment is completed
• In both contexts, a need for information that would enable legal judgements to be made
concerning the probability of individuals committing some kind of act that would disrupt
the peace and order of the state or individuals within the state
Types of Prediction Outcomes
• Predicting future events will result in one of 4 possible outcomes:
- True positive, true negative, false positive, false negative
• Two types of errors are dependent on each other
- Minimizing the number of false positive errors results in an increase in the number
of false negative errors
- False positive error: implications for the individual being assessed (denial of
freedom)
o Acceptable if the only consequence is being watched more closely while on
parole
- False negative error: implications for society and potential victim
• Each outcome has different consequences for offender or society
Outcomes
Decision
Does not reoffend
Reoffends
Predicted not to reoffend
True negative (correct
prediction)
False negative (incorrect
prediction)
Predict to reoffend
False positive (incorrect
prediction)
True positive (correct
prediction)
History of Risk Assessment
• Before the 1960s: little attention was paid to how well professionals could assess risk of
violence
• 1960s: Civil rights cases involving accuracy of mental health professionals in predicting
risk
• Baxstrom v. Herald (1966)
- U.S. supreme court rules that Baxstrom detained beyond his sentence and order him
released
- As a result more than 300 mentally offenders were released or transferred to less
secure institutions
- 98 too dangerous to be released were tracked
- Only 20 were arrested over a 4-year period
- Only 7 committed a violent crime
• Thronberry and Jacoby (1979)
- 400 forensic patients released into the community
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Document Summary
Risk assessment: every day, individuals make judgements about the likelihood of events, predi(cid:272)ti(cid:374)g future (cid:448)iole(cid:374)(cid:272)e has (cid:271)ee(cid:374) des(cid:272)ri(cid:271)ed as (cid:862)o(cid:374)e of the (cid:373)ost (cid:272)o(cid:373)ple(cid:454) a(cid:374)d (cid:272)o(cid:374)tro(cid:448)ersial issues i(cid:374) (cid:271)eha(cid:448)ioural s(cid:272)ie(cid:374)(cid:272)e a(cid:374)d la(cid:449)(cid:863) Risk assessment and predictions remain imperfect: can be used to justify the application of severe sanctions or to moderate extreme penalties. Identification of the violent recidivist is not infallible: not at a point where we can achieve a level of prediction free of error, prior to 1990s: risk was a dichotomy. The individual was either dangerous or not dangerous: now: risk is viewed as a range. The individual can vary in degree to which he/she is considered dangerous: probabilities change across time. Interaction among offender characteristics and the situation: risk assessment has 2 components: Prediction: probability of committing future acts. Identifying the risk factors related to this likelihood: development of interventions to manage or reduce the likelihood.
