The current study evaluated the accuracy of the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms, Second Edition (SIRS-2) in a criterion-group study using a sample of forensic psychiatric patients and a community simulation sample, comparing it to the original SIRS and to results published in the SIRS-2 manual. The SIRS-2 yielded an impressive specificity rate (94.3%) that exceeded that obtained using the original SIRS scoring method (92.0%) and approached that observed in the SIRS-2 normative data (97.5%). However, changes in scoring resulted in markedly lower sensitivity rates of the SIRS-2 (36.8% among forensic patients and 66.7% among simulators) compared with the SIRS (47.4% and 75.0%, respectively). The removal of the Total Score from the SIRS-2 further hindered identification of feigning. Analyses also evaluated the additive value of the new RS-Total and MT Index scales in the SIRS-2. Implications of these results for forensic psychologists are discussed.

The current archival study assesses risk factors associated with recommitment of 142 individuals adjudicated Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity (NGRI) from civil settings to a forensic hospital in New York State. Within 10 years of transfer from a forensic hospital, 40 (28.2%) were recommitted. Using survival analyses to account for the wide range in opportunity for recommitment, period of transfer (i.e., pre versus post the 1995 case of George L, which clarified factors related to assessments of dangerousness) and the Historical scale and specific items of the HCR-20 emerged as important risk factors for recommitment. Specifically, hazard of recommitment was 2.9 times higher for those with high Historical scores as compared to those with low scores. However, few individual risk factors were associated with recommitment. Prior supervision failure, negative attitude, problems with substance use, and absent or less serious major mental illness and relationship problems were informative in predicting recommitment over 10 and 3 year follow-up periods.

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Forensic patients with antisocial personality disorder (APD) were compared to forensic patients without APD on a validated measure of malingering (Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms [SIRS]). Results indicated that patients with APD were not significantly more likely to exceed accepted cutoff scores on the SIRS (i.e., 17.9% vs. 11.6%, respectively), nor were they more likely to be suspected of malingering by clinicians (17.9% vs. 18.6%). Although there was a high level of disagreement between clinicians’ determination of malingering and classification by the SIRS, this relationship was not significant. Furthermore, patients with APD who were suspected by clinicians to be malingering were not more likely to be classified as responding genuinely using the SIRS. These findings challenge the recommendation issued by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed., text revision) that advises clinicians to be highly suspicious of malingering in the presence of APD.