Criminal Risk Assessment, Clinical Judgment of

[Page 273]Clinical judgment in the assessment of offender risk contrasts with mechanical assessment. When clinical judgment is used, the assessment is based on clinical observations or experience, formal theory or informal hypotheses about criminal behavior, grasp of the current status of research on risk assessment, or similar intuitive understandings of risk. Clinical judgment can also be used following the completion of a mechanical or otherwise structured assessment of previously selected risk factors, commonly referred to in the criminal risk assessment field as structured professional judgment. This entry briefly compares unaided clinical risk assessment with mechanical risk assessment tools and considers the nature and role of structured clinical judgment in current risk assessment approaches.