CONSTRUCTION AND VALIDATION OF RISK ASSESSMENTS IN A 6-YEAR FOLLOW-UPOF FORENSIC PATIENTS - A TRIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS

Evaluations of risk were conducted for 162 Canadian mentally disordere d criminal defendants through the assembly of actuarial data, scores f rom special-to-purpose psychometric instruments, and scaled global pre dictions of dangerousness to others by clinicians and nonclinical rate rs. Violent conduct by participants was tracked across legal and medic al institutions and the community for a subsequent 6 years, with aggre gate violence base rates reaching 62%. Decisions about risk were stron gly associated with participant attributes and presentations during fo rensic interviews, but neither linear regression equations involving b ackground and scale items nor direct discretionary judgments could acc ount for more than 25% of variance in the frequency of outcome violenc e. Predictive accuracy maximized after 3 years, and was strongest for hospital-based violence. Professional clinicians were no more accurate than nonclinical raters. Implications of these findings for the socio legal control of violence, and for the resurgent ''second generation'' of risk research, are explored.