Predictive Efficacy and the Preventive Detention of Dangerous Sexual Offenders: Contributions from Nonlinear Dynamical Systems Theory

Behavioral scientists are regularly summoned by the legal system to make predictions about the likelihood of future dangerous behavior (i.e., violence prediction/risk assessment). In recent years, such efforts have been subjected to considerable scrutiny as, despite the evolution of risk assessment instruments, social scientists have yet to demonstrate the ability to predict violence with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Yet concerns with predictive efficacy may be rooted in the limitations of prediction itself. Nonlinear dynamical systems theory (i.e., chaos theory) and quantum physics jointly paint a picture of human behavior as fundamentally unpredictable; in their light, we are asked to question whether future violence can ever be predicted with a tolerable level of error. In this article, I provisionally explore this very issue, particularly as it appears in the context of decisions concerning the disposition of criminal sexual offenders.