Title: Chapter 6: Sex Offender Risk Assessment | Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering, and Tracking
Headings: Chapter 6: Sex Offender Risk Assessment
Chapter 6: Sex Offender Risk Assessment
by Kevin Baldwin, Ph.D.
Findings
Introduction
Review of Research
Empirical research has yet to identify a single "best" risk assessment instrument.
Future Directions
Summary
Notes
References

Content: The typical venues for sex offender risk assessment include —
Sentencing and criminal adjudications, during which the results of the assessment are used to ascertain appropriate levels and periods of confinement and/or community supervision. Determinations of treatment needs, settings and modalities. Sex offender registration and notification (SORN) proceedings, during which assessment results are used to classify ("level") offenders based on their assessed risk. Civil commitment proceedings, during which assessment results are used to argue for and against indefinite confinement based on the assessed risk for sexual recidivism. Figure 1. Sex Offender Management Practices Across the Criminal Justice Spectrum
Methods of assessing sex offender risk can generally be categorized as follows (Hanson, 1998): Unguided (or unstructured) clinical judgment: The evaluator 1 reviews case material and applies personal experience to arrive at a risk estimate, without relying on a specific list of risk factors or underlying theory to prioritize or weight any of the information used. Guided (or structured) clinical judgment: The evaluator begins with a finite list of factors thought to be related to risk, drawn from personal experience and/or theory rather than from relevant empirical evidence.