Quality of criminal risk assessment – empirical studies about the importance of minimum requirements and different methodological approaches for criminal risk assessment

Abstract

Risk assessment reports about individuals convicted of sexual and/or violent offenses are an issue of increasing public and socio-political concern, and their (methodological) quality is regularly and intensively discussed also in research literature. Since the publication of methodological minimum requirements for risk assessment reports of an interdisciplinary working group in 2006 in Germany and updated recommendations in 2019, there is little empirical evidence on whether and how these standards are put into clinical and judicial practice. In an iterative research project of six independent empirical studies, a systematic retrospective analysis of more than 1.000 risk and criminal responsibility assessment reports from the penitentiary in Freiburg, the Forensic Psychiatry of the Charité in Berlin, and the Department of Forensic Psychiatry of the University Hospital Munich from 1999 to 2015 was conducted. Based on this, judicial verdicts, and officially registered re-offenses according to the Federal Central Register (June 2016) were examined and related to the degree of application of the above-mentioned minimum requirements, different methodological approaches to criminal risk assessment, and the use of psychometric tests and structured criminal risk assessment instruments (in both risk and criminal responsibility reports). Summarising, the results showed an increasing implementation of minimum requirements and standardization of clinical and judicial criminal risk assessment practice, providing further support for the use of structured and standardized risk assessment procedures compared to unstructured approaches. On the one hand, the results indicate a (partial) positive effect, on the other hand, more efforts are needed regarding further quality assurance of both criminal risk and responsibility assessments. The results are discussed from different perspectives, and implications for practice are given.