Sexual Violence Risk Prediction in a Police Context

Adoption of evidence-based approaches by police services offers a practical and scientific solution to ensure public safety and proper allocation of resources. Advances in the field of sexual violence risk prediction have the potential to inform policing practices. The present study examines the validity of existing actuarial measures to predict the future sexual violence behavior of 290 identified male perpetrators of sexual assault against adult victims (ages 16 and older). The Static-99R and Static-2002R were coded from police documentation, and the sample was followed up for at least 1 year with an average of 3.6 years. Both measures showed large effects for predicting any offending, violent offending, and sexual offending in the form of charges and convictions. The findings suggest that existing sex offender research can extend to police practice, and criminogenic factors used to predict recidivism among convicted offenders may apply to assessing the risk posed by perpetrators of police-reported sexual assaults.