Criminal Risk Assessment, Domestic Violence

Domestic violence risk assessment is the evaluation of characteristics of an offender, offense, or other circumstances considered relevant to the risk that an offender will commit a domestic violence offense in the future. Whether information is considered relevant and how it is weighed depend on the approaches taken to risk assessment. In the two leading approaches, these decisions are based either on empirical research leading to actuarial data that permit individual risk to be estimated using the strongest predictors known for the offender population or on a broader assessment of the individual leading to an overall judgment of [Page 279]risk or a clinical case formulation. Domestic violence risk assessment is important to the extent it aids the risk principle of the Risk-Need-Responsivity model to be ...