Criminal Risk Assessment, Violence

Violence risk assessment is a professional task that is required in numerous legal and clinical settings. It has as its most basic premise the identification of persons who pose higher versus lower levels of risk of future violent behavior. More comprehensive approaches also facilitate decisions about why persons have acted violently, why they might do so in the future, and what risk management efforts can be put into place to reduce risk. Such decisions are made daily, thousands of times, across myriad contexts, pan-globally. Common settings include parole decisions, sentencing determinations, discharge from forensic hospitalization, civil commitment, workplace health and safety determinations, immigration hearings, law enforcement case management, community risk management of patients and offenders, bail decisions, and sexually violent predator and other indeterminate sentencing ...