(Belgium, Canada, England, the Netherlands, New
Zealand, Sweden, the United States, and Wales).
Interrater reliability tests have typically found the
instrument’s reliability to fall in the .90 to .94 range—
very high, though not surprising given the small num-
ber of items on the scale.
The RRASOR’s predictive accuracy (as measured
by the ROC) is regularly found to be equal to that of
other actuarial instruments when tested with individ-
ual samples. When viewed across a host of samples in
a meta-analytic test by R. Karl Hanson and Kelly
Morton-Bourgon, the RRASOR showed a lesser
degree of relationship with sexual recidivism than did
a second-generation actuarial scale called the STA-
TIC–99 (described briefly below). The RRASOR’s
predictive validity relative to sexual offenders’ non-
sexual violent recidivism, however, has regularly been
found to be poor, indicating the instrument’s effec-
tiveness is specific to sexual recidivism.Use of RRASOR in Furthering
Risk Assessment Technology
As a first-generation instrument, the RRASOR served to
demonstrate that actuarial procedures could be effective
in assessing sexual re-offending risk. The development
of a second-generation risk assessment instrument, the
STATIC–99, was completely based on combining the 4
items from the RRASOR with the items from one other
scale, for a total 10-item scale. Given that the STA-
TIC–99 has become the most widely used actuarial
instrument for assessing sexual recidivism risk, the
RRASOR served well toward its own improvement.
The RRASOR has also served as a covariate in
analyses to scale out the possible effect of different a
priori recidivism risk levels (such as relative to the
effect on sexual recidivism rates of aging, of the inabil-
ity to suppress deviant responding on the penile
plethysmograph, and of sex offender treatment). These
occasions represented the first time researchers could
statistically control for different risk levels in an empir-
ically validated way.Why the RRASOR Is Still Used
Research involving dimensions of risk (i.e., risk driven
independently by offenders’ sexual deviance, their gen-
eral antisociality, and other dimensions) has docu-
mented the utility of the RRASOR and fueled its
continued use. The 3 nonage items from the RRASORappear regularly as correlates to measures of sexual
deviance and as not correlating strongly with measures
of general criminality. Advocates of multidimensional
risk assessment procedures often still use the RRASOR
when assessing sexual recidivism risk to address risk
driven by subjects’ sexual deviance, while assessing
general antisociality-driven risk with other instruments.Dennis M. DorenSee alsoMinnesota Sex Offender Screening
Tool–Revised (MnSOST–R); Risk Assessment
Approaches; Sex Offender Civil Commitment; Sex
Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG); Sexual
Violence Risk–20 (SVR–20); STATIC–99 and
STATIC–2002 Instruments; Violence Risk Appraisal
Guide (VRAG)Further Readings
Doren, D. M. (2002). Evaluating sex offenders: A manual for
civil commitments and beyond.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Doren, D. M. (2004). Stability of the interpretative risk
percentages for the RRASOR and STATIC–99. Sexual
Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 16(1), 25–36.
Doren, D. M. (2004). Toward a multidimensional model for
sexual recidivism risk. Journal of Interpersonal Violence,
19 (8), 835–856.
Hanson, R. K. (1997). The development of a brief actuarial
risk scale for sexual offense recidivism.Retrieved
February 2, 2007, from http://www.psepcsppcc.gc.ca/
publications/corrections/199704_e.pdf
Hanson, R. K., & Thornton, D. (2000). Improving risk
assessments for sex offenders: A comparison of three
actuarial scales. Law and Human Behavior, 24(1), 119–136.RECONSTRUCTIVEMEMORY
Reconstructive memoryrefers to a class of memory
theories that claim that the experience of remember-
ing an event involves processes that make use of par-
tial fragmentary information as well as a set of rules
for combining that information into a coherent view
of the past event. These theories provide a powerful
way of understanding how witnesses remember
crimes, how reliable recovered memories of abuse are,
and how jurors remember testimony. According to
reconstructive theories of memory, ordinary memory
is prone to error. Errors in remembering can be broken
down into errors of omission,in which information isReconstructive Memory——— 675R-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:43 PM Page 675