Sexual Violence Risk–20 (SVR–20)

The Sexual Violence Risk–20 (SVR–20) is a set of structured professional judgment guidelines for conducting sexual violence risk assessments in criminal and civil forensic contexts. The SVR–20 is not a quantitative test that yields norm-referenced or criterion-referenced scores. Rather, it was developed as an aide mémoire to help systematize the risk assessment of individuals who (allegedly) have committed an act of sexual violence. More important, the concept of risk assessed by SVR–20 is not limited to likelihood of a new offense, as is commonly the case in actuarial (i.e., statistically based) tests. Other aspects of risk, such as level of victim harm, victim specificity, frequency, imminence, and likelihood are also addressable by this instrument.