TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2008//
TI  - Predicting violent reconvictions using the HCR-20
JO  - British journal of psychiatry
A1  - Gray, Nicola S.
A1  - Taylor, Julie
A1  - Snowden, Robert J.
SP  - 384
EP  - 387
VL  - 192
IS  - 5
N2  - BACKGROUND: Risk assessment of future violent acts is of great importance for both public protection and care planning. Structured clinical assessments offer a method by which accurate assessments could be achieved. AIMS: To test the efficacy of the Historical, Clinical and Risk Management Scales (HCR-20) structured risk assessment scheme on a large sample of male forensic psychiatric patients discharged from medium secure units in the UK. METHOD: In a pseudo-prospective study, 887 male patients were followed for at least 2 years. The HCR-20 was completed using only pre-discharge information, and violent and other offending behaviour post-discharge was obtained from official records. RESULTS: The HCR-20 total score was a good predictor of both violent and other offences following discharge. The historical and risk sub-scales were both able to predict offences, but the clinical sub-scale did not produce significant predictions. The predictive efficacy was highest for short periods (under 1 year) and showed a modest fall in efficacy over longer periods (5 years). CONCLUSIONS: The results provide a strong evidence base that the HCR-20 is a good predictor of both violent and non-violent offending following release from medium secure units for male forensic psychiatric patients in the UK.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0007-1250
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.107.044065
ID  - ref1
ER  -