1st Edition

Dynamic Risk Factors What role should they play in the explanation, assessment and rehabilitation of offenders?

Edited By Tony Ward, Clare-Ann Fortune Copyright 2017
    230 Pages
    by Routledge

    218 Pages
    by Routledge

    Dynamic risk factors are the children of risk prediction. They were identified to help practitioners assess risk of recidivism and to set treatment targets likely to reduce reoffending. This resulted in the development of intervention programs designed to modify the characteristics of individuals and their environments associated with crime. The predictive nature of their legacy lies in their ability to provide reliable information about the likelihood of future reoffending. In this respect, dynamic risk factors are useful complements to static risk factors such as age, gender, and history of offending, and add incremental validity to recidivism prediction. Their treatment utility resides in the fact that practitioners increasingly rely on the identification of dynamic risk factors to direct correctional assessment and interventions. Thus, dynamic risk factors have a dual status. They are both useful predictors of reoffending and measures of risk status, and potential causes of reoffending, capable of serving an explanatory role as well as a predictive one. It is a simple and powerful conceptualization that has streamlined forensic and correctional research, program development, and the delivery of treatment. Despite its conceptual elegance we believe that the dual conceptualization of dynamic risk factors is problematic and these difficulties spill over into their role in assessment, assessment, treatment, and desistance contexts. In this publication, the nature and function of dynamic risk factors are investigated and their strengths and limitations identified. This book was originally published as a special issue of Psychology, Crime and Law.

    1. Dynamic risk factors: Scientific kinds or predictive constructs Tony Ward

    2. Putting risk factors in their place: An evolutionary-developmental approach to understanding risk Russil Durrant

    3. A conceptual kaleidoscope: Contemplating dynamic structural risk and decoupling risk from need Kelly Hannah-Moffat

    4. Dysfunctional expertise and its relationship with dynamic risk factors in offenders Zarah Vernham and Claire Nee

    5. Problems in the measurement of dynamic risk factors in sexual offenders Anthony Beech, Helen Wakeling, Fillip Szumski and Nick Freemantle

    6. Challenges for the theory and application of dynamic risk factors Jacinta Cording, Sarah Beggs Christofferson and Randy Grace

    7. Dynamic risk factors and sexual offending: The conundrum of assessment Sharon Casey

    8. Understanding dynamic risk factors for violence Gabrielle Klepfisz, Michael Daffern and Andrew Day

    9. Developing a theory of dynamic risk David Thornton

    10. Dynamic risk and protective factors Ralph C. Serin, Nick Chadwick and Caleb D. Lloyd

    11. Desistance and dynamic risk factors belong together Devon Polaschek

    12. From dynamic risk factors to casual processes Tony Ward and Clare-Ann Fortune

    Biography

    Tony Ward is the Professor of Clinical Psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

    Clare-Ann Fortune is a Lecturer in the School of Psychology, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.