Violence risk assessment in forensic psychology office: from childhood to elderly

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the work developed by the Forensic Psychology Office (GPF) at Forensic Sciences and Psychology Laboratory located at the Egas Moniz Higher Education School. GPF’s main goals are performing forensic psychological assessments, especially violence risk assessments, as well as scientific research. The main purpose of violence risk assessment is the prevention and development of management strategies to minimise risk and try to identify factors that may contribute to the violent behaviour [1] supporting the criminal justice system in allocating more appropriate measures (e.g. sentence, intervention) [2]. GPF presents itself as the main response to cases with higher complexity and it provides guidance about the necessary measures to protect victims [3,4].