What do we know about sex offender risk assessment?

Denying individual liberty on the basis of community protection requires a defensible mechanism for identifying those sex offenders likely to reoffend . Reliance on expert opinion has become routine, even when such opinions ha ve limited accuracy. Careful attention to the empirical literature, however , has the potential to improve risk assessments for sexual offenders. This article describes different approaches to risk assessment, summarizes the e mpirical literature on individual risk factors, and reviews recent attempts to create actuarial risk scales for sex offense recidivism. A number of hi storical and highly stable predictor variables have been documented (e.g., offense history and deviant sexual preferences), but the research on dynami c (changeable) risk factors has been limited. Consequently, the research is more useful for identifying high-risk offenders than for determining when they could be safely released into the community.