Encyclopedia of Psychology and Law

civil commitment, release from prison or forensic hos-

pital, sentencing, transfer of youths to adult court, and

sexually violent predator determinations. The formal

study of violence risk assessment proliferated after the

seminal research studies and legal decisions in the

1960s and 1970s established that despite the legal

demands for and constitutionality of risk assessments,

little empirical evidence could be garnered in their

support. Researchers soon focused on identifying

promising risk factors for violence and, more recently

have been developing and evaluating structured vio-

lence risk assessment measures intended to improve

on unstructured clinical prediction.

The Purpose and Application

of Violence Risk Assessment

The purpose of violence risk assessment differs some-

what across applications, but at its core, it is the estima-

tion of the likelihood of future violent behavior posed

by an individual. In some settings (i.e., treatment dis-

charge planning), risk assessment also includes a spec-

ification of the risk factors present in a case and the risk

management or intervention strategies that would be

necessary to mitigate risk. In other settings (i.e., sexual

predator determinations, prison security-level classifi-

cation decisions), less attention is given to the specific

natureof the risk factors that underlie a risk assessment

than to the end result (an estimate of levelor amountof

risk).

Almost invariably, risk assessments transpire

within legal contexts. One exception would be the

duty to protect that many mental health professionals

have in the context of private psychotherapy. Even

here, however, a mental health professional is subject

to common law and has ethical duties to identify high-

risk patients. At some point in their careers, most

mental health professionals will be faced with a client

or patient who poses a risk of violence.

In terms of applications, violence risk assessment

commonly is employed for release decisions from pris-

ons and psychiatric facilities (both civil and forensic).

Although specifics differ across jurisdictions, release

may be contingent on a decision that a person does not

pose an undue risk to public safety. In some such appli-

cations, efforts are made to gear the risk assessment

toward identifying risk factors that would be important

to target in violence-reduction treatments. Violence

potential is also relevant in the civil commitment con-

text, in which persons must not only be mentally ill but

also pose a risk to others (or self) to be detained invol-

untarily. In criminal sentencing contexts, risk assess-

ment can be used to inform decisions about whether a

person should receive a custodial or a community sen-

tence. In more extreme manifestations, it may be used in

the determination of whether a person is sentenced to

death. An increasingly common use of risk assessments

is to determine whether a person meets statutory criteria

for being declared a “sexually violent predator”; that is,

a sexual offender who poses a substantial risk to re-

offend in a sexual manner may be committed for treat-

ment after serving a term of incarceration. Other

countries use risk assessment within the context of inde-

terminate sentencing statutory provisions. Furthermore,

risk assessment often is used when persons are admitted

to prisons, youth detention centers, or psychiatric facili-

ties, to determine the security level of their placement

and/or their risk-relevant treatment needs. There are

numerous other legally relevant contexts in which risk

assessment figures prominently (i.e., child abuse evalu-

ations, custody and access evaluations, judicial interim

release decisions, immigration hearings).

Risk assessments typically are done by persons

within the human services fields, such as psychology,

psychiatry, social work, nursing, or substance use coun-

seling. Personnel within prison systems (i.e., correc-

tional classification officers) also engage in a type of

risk assessment for offenders admitted to penal systems.

History of the Scientific Study

of Violence Risk Assessment

Although the clinical and legal tasks of violence risk

assessment have been occurring in some form for cen-

turies, the contemporary scientific study of violence risk

assessment has its roots in important legal decisions and

empirical studies that occurred between the mid-1960s

and late 1970s. During this time, important legal deci-

sions such as Baxstrom v. Herold,a 1966 decision of the

U.S. Supreme Court, found the extant process underly-

ing postsentence confinement of the so-called mentally

disordered dangerous offenders unconstitutional and

ordered hundreds of such persons, all of whom had been

declared to be “dangerous,” to be released from confine-

ment or transferred to less secure institutions. The soci-

ologist Henry J. Steadman took advantage of the

opportunity to study the fate of these persons and

reported that there were very few who subsequently

committed new violent offenses, suggesting that the

accuracy of the determinations of dangerousness was

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