Chapter 10 Flashcards
(71 cards)
What is risk assessment?
✔ Risk assessment involves evaluating the likelihood of future criminal behavior, taking into account various factors that may change over time.
How is risk viewed in risk assessments?
✔ Risk is viewed as a range or continuum, with probabilities changing over time.
What factors can change someone’s risk?
✔ The interaction between a person’s characteristics, background, and their current situation.
*What are the two components of risk assessment?
- Prediction: Identifying risk factors and analyzing the likelihood of future criminal behavior.
- Management: Developing strategies to manage or reduce the level of risk.
What is the primary goal of risk assessments?
✔ To prevent future violent or sexually violent acts.
What is the purpose of child protection risk assessments?
✔ To assess if a child (under 19) is at risk of abuse or neglect and if removal from the home is necessary.
What is the “duty to warn” in risk assessments?
✔ The obligation to warn others if someone you’re working with may harm others.
When are risk assessments conducted in criminal settings?
✔ At major decision points, such as pretrial, sentencing, and release.
What is the balance in risk assessments for offenders?
✔ Balancing the needs of the offender with public safety, particularly in sentencing decisions.
*What are the four types of prediction outcomes in risk assessments?
- True Positive: Correct prediction that the person will reoffend and they do.
- True Negative: Correct prediction that the person will not reoffend and they don’t.
- False Positive: Incorrect prediction that the person will reoffend but they don’t.
->Affects the offender (negative consequences) - False Negative: Incorrect prediction that the person will not reoffend, but they do.
->Affects society, community, and potential future victims
→Decision = predicted to not reoffend, Does not reoffend = True negative (correct prediction), Reoffends = false negative (incorrect prediction)
→Decision = predicted to reoffend, Does not reoffend = false positive (incorrect prediction), Reoffends = true positive (correct prediction)
*What is the base rate problem in predicting behavior?
✔ It refers to the percentage of people in a population who commit a criminal act, which affects the accuracy of predictions.
->easier for us to predict frequent events then infrequent ones
*How does the base rate problem affect predictions?
✔ Low base rates can increase the occurrence of false positive predictions.
What factors can affect base rates?
- The group or population being studied (e.g., university students vs. correctional center inmates).
- What is being predicted (how behaviors are defined and measured).
- The length of follow-up monitoring (e.g., 6 months, 5 years, or a lifetime).
What did the Baxstrom and Dixon studies show?
✔ “Dangerous” forensic patients who were released rarely reoffended, illustrating the inaccuracy of risk assessment predictions.
What did the Baxstrom and Dixon studies reveal about base rates?
✔ The base rate for violence is relatively low, and the rate of false positives in predictions was very high.
What did the Baxstrom and Dixon studies suggest about clinical expertise?
✔ Clinical expertise was compared to “flipping a coin,” suggesting that professionals were not accurately predicting violence.
Are these risk assessment predictions still used in legal systems?
✔ Yes, risk assessments are still used in Canadian and U.S. courts, though predictions are “not always wrong…only most of the time.”
What assumption is made in risk assessment?
✔ There is a belief that risk can be measured.
What concern exists regarding instruments used in risk assessment?
✔ While instruments exist to measure risk, ideal evaluations of these instruments cannot always be conducted.
What is the primary concern regarding the release of high-risk offenders?
✔ There is concern that high-risk offenders cannot be safely released.
*What are the three weaknesses in the research on predicting violence?
- Limited number of risk factors we are actually studied
a. know risk is multidimensional as a construct - How criterion variable is measured
a. what are the variables we are actually trying to measure?
b. A lot of crimes go unreported - How criterion variable is defined
a. What is violence? How do we define and measure it? Severity of violent act? Who’s being targeted? Location of where it’s taking place? What’s the motivation?
Why is the limited number of risk factors a weakness in research?
Because risk is multidimensional, and studying only a few factors doesn’t capture the full picture.
What is the issue with how the criterion variable (violence) is measured?
✔ Many crimes go unreported, and it’s unclear which specific aspects of violence should be measured (e.g., severity, motivation, or target).
What is the concern with how violence is defined in risk assessments?
✔ There is no clear consensus on how to define and measure violence, including the severity, location, and target of violent acts.
