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The aim of this paper is to identify some of the urgent issues currently confronting criminal justice policymakers, researchers and practitioners. To this end a diverse group of researchers and clinicians have collaborated to identify pressing concerns in the field and to make some suggestions about how to proceed in the future. The authors represent individuals with varying combinations of criminal justice research, professional training (e.g. social work, criminal justice, criminology, social work, clinical psychology) and clinical orientation, and experience. The paper is comprised of 13 commentaries and a subsequent discussion based on these reflections. The commentaries are divided into the categories of explanation of criminal behaviour, clinical assessment and correctional intervention, and cover issues ranging from the role of clinical expertise in treatment, problems with risk assessment to the adverse effects of social oppression on minority groups. Following the commentaries, we summarize some of their key themes and briefly discuss a number of major issues likely to confront the field in the next 5–10 years.

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In two experiments, experimentally naïve rats were trained in concurrent variable-interval schedules in which the reinforcer ratios changed daily according to a pseudorandom binary sequence. In Experiment 1, relative response rates showed clear sensitivity to current-session reinforcer ratios, but not to previous sessions' reinforcer ratios. Within sessions, sensitivity to the current session's reinforcement rates increased steadily, and by session end, response ratios approached matching to the current-session reinforcer ratios. Across sessions, sensitivity to the current session's reinforcer ratio decreased with continued exposure to the pseudorandom binary sequence, contrary to expectations based on previous studies demonstrating learning sets. Using a second group of naïve rats, Experiment 2 replicated the main results from Experiment 1 and showed that although there were increases over sessions in both changeover rate and response rate during the changeover delay, neither could explain the accompanying reductions in sensitivity. We consider the role of reinforcement history, showing that our results can be simulated using two separate representations, one local and one nonlocal, but a more complex approach will be needed to bring together these results and other history effects such as learning sets and spontaneous recovery.

The inclusion of dynamic factors in risk assessment measures used with forensic populations has largely been considered an improvement in both the accuracy and utility of these assessments in informing treatment and sentencing. However, there are important challenges associated with the current approach to the conceptualisation, identification, and use of dynamic factors in risk assessment. Whereas some of these challenges relate to applied settings (such as the use of measures with different offender populations), there are also deeper questions regarding the construct validity of dynamic risk measures and the methodological strategies used to identify them. More emphasis on theoretically-driven research is needed, to identify causal and explanatory relationships between dynamic risk factors and recidivism. We hope that highlighting these challenges can help to build a consensus on a future research agenda for dynamic risk factors.

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