Predicting Severity of Violent Recidivism by Aggression Type: What do Risk Instruments, Cognitive and Personality Scales Contribute?

• Main Author: Douglass, Melanie Dawn
• Other Authors: Nussbaum, David
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: violent recidivism; severity; 0621
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/18283

This study provides an initial analysis of how effective commonly used risk assessment and psychological tests are in postdicting the severity of the index offense and the individual’s most severe offense in a forensic inpatient sample. The study involved a chart review of risk assessment measures, cognitive and personality tests, and criminological data for 65 patients at St. Joseph’s Hamilton Mountain Centre for Mental Health Care. The results found a significant correlation between the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (Wechsler, 1997) and index offense severity. Moreover, an aggression typology (Nussbaum, Saint-Cyr, & Bell, 1997) showed promising signs in differentiating severity by offender type. The study also suggests that further research is necessary in this area, given the limited relationship found between risk instruments and severity of violence, though the risk assessment measures did show good concurrent validity.