Customer Reviews

Evaluating Sex Offenders: A Manual for Civil Commitments and Beyond

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Evaluating Sex Offenders: A Manual for Civil Commitmemts and Beyond
is an excellent guide for mental health professionals who do this type of work. While the focus is on understanding the civil commitments laws which apply to some states with such laws, the book has broader utility. Dr. Doren does a fine job of explaining his model of offender risk assessment and providing professionals with the means of doing forensically defensable evaluations. This book will be read with interest by anyone working with sexual offenders.

dr. doren provides an excellent resource for the professional conducting civil commitment evaluations of sex offenders. he provides a fully sufficient review of relevant laws across the states that had civil commitment laws in 2002. he provides an excellent, detailed, methodical approach for the clinician conducting such evaluations. he discusses very practical implementation issues and how to avoid potential problems. when used with other sources, this is very helpful and i wish more evaluators might read and use this text before conducting such evaluations. i hope that he provides an update soon that includes discussion of all changes in state laws and, if the federal child protection act is passed, the effects of that legislation on federally-required state civil commitment laws and their implementation. he could discuss in greater detail some of the legal and programmatic implementation concerns. a revision might also include helpful web sites, literature, state resources, perhaps even documentation. this 4 year old edition, while not perfect, is outstanding and, i believe, worth every penny spent, new.

Yes, this book doesn't conform to DSM. That's because the law doesn't conform to DSM. Just to make sure this horse is dead, the Kansas commitment statute broadly defines any mental abnormality as a potential ground for commitment, if it creates a risk of sexual offending and reduces the person's ability to inhibit their impulses. The Supreme Court upheld the statute as Constitutionally permitted. Nothing says the mental abnormality has to be listed in the DSM, and the Supremes specifically stated that this was OK; States can go beyond psychiatric manuals if they choose, so long as the law passes strict scrutiny.

Whew! Now, back to reviewing the book. I've participated in many different forms of this evaluation, and taken training from Doren, yet learned still more from this book. What I would particularly recommend to any student of forensic psychology is that this manual is outstanding in showing the detailed, step-by-step reasoning which an examiner must use when working in the area of psychology and law. For each diagnosis he discusses, Doren presents very carefully worked-out issues, and sometimes dilemmas, which the examiner will confront. In one place he describes a great deal of supplemental material not included in the DSM, to support the idea that there is a diagnosable paraphilia for rapists. He even lists some of the reasons the committee members have given as to why they didn't put it in the manual, but just left it to "Paraphilia NOS." Similarly, there's a careful discussion of why substance abuse diagnoses are almost always not relevant to these evaluations, even where the patient clearly has a substance abuse disorder. This will be tremendously helpful the next time I'm on the witness stand.

Probably the greatest drawback is the book's age. It was written while Kansas v Crane was being deliberated, and is thus almost 10 years old. So his excellent review of research on psychological measures can't include the last 10 years of research.

Despite this, the book is a great book. Anyone who follows the detail-oriented approach that Doren uses here will be able to update their knowledge-base relatively quickly, in ways that I hope he will soon do in a second edition.

Unfortunately, section of this text do not comform to the DSM diagnostic constructs and are highly questionable.

Well written, and very informative for forensic psychologist, social workers, and mental health staff members.