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Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment (International Perspectives on Forensic Mental Health)

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Best practices for violence risk assessment change from second to second. So, publishing a sourcebook on the topic is a bit like trying to capture and hold a hummingbird. Still, the authorship and range of content here may make this an authoritative resource for at least a minute or two - and then they can publish a second edition.

The volume's first editor, Randy Otto, is a leading forensic psychology scholar. An award-winning professor in the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy, he is past president of both the American Psychology-Law Society and the American Board of Forensic Psychology. He also chairs the Committee to Revise the Specialty Guidelines for Forensic Psychology, and he is co-author of the third edition of the widely consulted text, Psychological Evaluations for the Courts. Co-editor Kevin Douglas is a former colleague of Otto's at the Department of Mental Health Law and Policy.

The book begins with an overview chapter by respected forensic scholar Kirk Heilbrun. Remaining chapters - most written by leading practitioners and instrument developers -- review specific instruments for assessing both adult and juvenile risk for violence, including sexual violence.

Tools reviewed include: EARL-20B and EARL-21G, SAVRY, Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory, VRAG, SORAG, Violence Risk Scale, HCR-20, Classification of Violence Risk, Level of Service Inventory, Spousal Assault Risk Assessment Guide, Static-99, SVR-20, RSVP and others.

I am impressed with what I have read so far. John Monahan wrote the chapter on the Classification of Violence Risk. David DeMatteo, John Edens, and Allison Hart have a nice chapter on the utility - and limitations - of using psychopathy measures to address violence risk. And Stephen Hart and Douglas Boer provide an up-to-the-minute summary of reliability and validity studies on the SVR-20 and a parallel instrument for assessing sex offender risk, the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (RSVP), which I predict may overtake the Static-99 at some point, given the latter's present instability and atheoretical basis.

One of the challenges facing mental health clinicians and criminal justice professionals alike is how to deal with patients who are potentially violent or who have histories of violence. This has important implications for defendants charged, arrested, tried, sentenced, incarcerated, and eventually released, who may pose a danger to the community. Traditionally, psychiatric and psychological evaluators have relied on their knowledge and clinical experience to assess defendants for violence risk. However, over the past three decades, the accuracy of expert clinical judgment has been called into question and attempts have been made to develop reliable, valid, and accurate measures of violence risk. Many such structured clinical interviews and rating scales have appeared over the years; the problem has been how to find them all in one place. Here they are - most of them, anyway.
Handbook of Violence Risk Assessment is a no-nonsense, down-to-business compendium of the most widely researched and applied violence risk assessment tools in current usage. Two introductory chapters provide an overview of violence risk assessment instruments and their application to different offender types, especially the psychopath. Subsequent chapters describe the use of these kinds of evaluative instruments for both adult and juvenile offenders. This is not light reading, but what saves the book from being a bone-dry expository slog is the presence of illuminating case studies for each topic that puts practical flesh on the theoretical skeletons by showing how these instruments can be used in the everyday real world of clinical-forensic practice.
Yes, there's a certain degree of salesmanship here, as each chapter author expounds on the virtues of his or her favorite - and in many cases, proprietary - assessment tool. However, the editors do a fair job of keeping the presentation objective and focused on the task of providing clinical-forensic practitioners with what they need to know to make their choice of violence risk assessment instrument for their particular populations and settings.
- Laurence Miller, PhD, International Journal of Emergency Mental Health