Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20)

Risk assessment of sexual offenders is an important topic in forensic psychiatry and psychology. Practitioners are given the responsibility of completing risk assessments of offenders to try to maximize public safety and encourage responsible management, both of which depend on effective intervention and supervision. The basis of the development of the SVR-20 was to utilize structured professional judgment (SPJ) to inform risk management to, in turn, maximize public safety, the latter being viewed as the ultimate objective of all risk assessment work. This entry focuses on the SVR-20 and its revised version, discussing its guidelines.