Citation

Douglas T, Pugh J, Singh I, Savulescu J, Fazel S. Eur. Psychiatry 2016; 42: 134-137.

Affiliation

Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom; Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust, Warneford Hospital, Oxford OX3 7JX, United Kingdom. Electronic address: seena.fazel@psych.ox.ac.uk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.eurpsy.2016.12.009

PMID

28371726

Abstract

Violence risk assessment tools are increasingly used within criminal justice and forensic psychiatry, however there is little relevant, reliable and unbiased data regarding their predictive accuracy. We argue that such data are needed to (i) prevent excessive reliance on risk assessment scores, (ii) allow matching of different risk assessment tools to different contexts of application, (iii) protect against problematic forms of discrimination and stigmatisation, and (iv) ensure that contentious demographic variables are not prematurely removed from risk assessment tools.

Copyright © 2016 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS.. All rights reserved.

Language: en

Keywords

Crime prediction; Ethics and human rights; Forensic psychiatry; Racial profiling; Risk assessment; Violence