Risk Prediction and Sex Offending

Abstract

This chapter provides a discussion of the development of sex offending risk assessment approaches in forensic evaluations, over time, outlining the 'four generations' of risk assessment, including the approaches based on structured professional judgement. It describes conceptualizations of construct validity and their applications to the development of risk assessments; this includes a discussion of issues related to the indistinct nature of dynamic risk factors and an over-reliance on data and the hypothetico-deductive method of science to develop risk assessments. The authors discuss implications that a data-driven method of developing risk assessments has for the generalizability and availability of such tools for different sub-groups of sexual offenders. The chapter finishes with a discussion of approaches to the incorporation of change information into predictions of risk. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)