Application of operational psychology to assessment of inmates

Abstract

The newly developed actuarial risk instruments, Static-2002 (Hanson & Thornton, 2003a) and Risk Matrix 2000 (RM2000) (Thornton et al., 2003), were cross-validated and compared with Static-99 (Hanson & Thornton, 2000) in a retrospective follow-up study of 304 forensic psychiatrically evaluated sexual offenders (mean time-at-risk=14.8 years). All instruments predicted any sexual, non-sexual violent and any violent recidivism moderately for child molesters [area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operating characteristic (ROC)=0.67 (95% CI=0.57–0.77) to 0.76 (95% CI=0.68–0.85)] but poorly for rapists [AUCs=0.64 (95% CI=0.51–0.70) to 0.68 (95% CI=0.59–0.77)]. The instruments also predicted severe sexual recidivism moderately for child molesters [AUCs=0.74 (95% CI=0.63–0.86) to 0.79 (95% CI=0.70–0.89)] but were of no value in informing on this outcome for rapists [AUCs=0.58 (95% CI=0.47–0.68) to 0.63 (95% CI=0.53–0.73)]. AUC estimates were generally higher for Static-2002 and RM2000 than for Static-99, but no single instrument demonstrated statistical superiority. The study provides support for implementing actuarial instruments in applied risk assessments of child molesters.