Serious Offenders: Using Evidence to Predict and Manage the Risk

Area of Science:

• Criminology and Forensic Psychology
• Risk Assessment and Management in Criminal Justice

Background:

• Current risk management strategies for serious offenses often rely on insufficient assessments, with an overemphasis on offenders' self-reported information.
• A UK joint prison-probation inspection highlighted deficiencies in managing high-risk prisoners, particularly concerning risk of harm to others.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the utility of observing regular, on-going prisoner behavior as a predictor of violent recidivism.
• To explore whether consistent pre-release behaviors are a neglected but valuable source of risk information.

Main Methods:

• Discussion of a methodology based on observing regular prisoner behavior for risk prediction.
• Evaluation of this observational methodology using a sample of high-risk prisoners released into the community.

Main Results:

• Prison behavior is traditionally underutilized as a risk marker for violent recidivism, possibly due to focus on conspicuous, high-level actions.
• The research indicates that consistent, on-going pre-release behaviors provide a valuable, yet often overlooked, source of risk information.

Conclusions:

• Relying solely on verbal accounts or conspicuous behaviors is insufficient for effective risk management.
• Incorporating systematic observation of regular prisoner behavior can significantly enhance the accuracy of risk assessments for preventing future offenses.