The long term predictive validity of four current risk assessment instruments was assessed in Germany on three different groups of subjects. The groups consisted of 73 sex offenders released from a prison-based special therapeutic unit (therapeutic sample), 15 individuals who did not complete this treatment (drop-outs), and another 46 subjects who were assessed in a psychiatric hospital having been accused of a sexual offence (assessment sample). The results of the three samples were then compared. The outcome was obtained by examining the national conviction registry. The mean follow-up time was 9 years (range: 1 -340 months). The highest rate of recidivism was observed in the dropout group, with only one individual not reoffending. The assessment group had slightly fewer reoffences compared to the treatment group, which had been selected as a high risk population. The treatment sample exceeded the assessment sample, especially concerning sexual reoffences, but less so concerning violent reoffences. Of all the assessment instruments and using the total sample, the Static-99 was the most efficient predictor of all, violent non-sexual and non-contact sexual recidivism. For the prediction of contact sexual recidivism the AUC of the HCR-20 and the SVR-20 was slightly better, but very similar to the Static-99. These differences between assessment instruments were, however, not statistically significant. The AUC for the Static-99 was smaller in the treatment group, but larger than for other assessment instruments. The Static-99 risk categories correlated significantly with the Kaplan -Meier survival functions.
In 1980, the Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), an operationalised rating scale for the quantitative assessment of "psychopathy" as seen in the Anglo-American literature, was developed by R.D. Hare in Canada. It proved to be the most valid prognostic instrument for assessing relapse of criminals in English-speaking countries. This study was aimed at verifying the applicability of a German version of the revised PCL (PCL-R) on carefully selected subjects from the Forensic Psychiatric Department of the Psychiatric University Hospital in Munich. Two groups with an equal number of different forensic-psychiatric reports were evaluated retrospectively using the PCL-R. The results confirm the applicability of the PCL-R for the assessment of psychopathy in our sample population. One can expect that the positive experiences with the PCL-R abroad can be transferred to German conditions. The results are encouraging as to the practicability of the PCL-R as a prognostic instrument in routine forensic assessment.
In order to evaluate risk assessment instruments for sex offenders in Germany, we compared the predictive validity of the Static-99, HCR-20, SVR-20, and PCL-R scales for 134 sex offenders. The mean follow-up time was 9 years (range 1-340 months), using the first entry into the National Register of Criminal Convictions as endpoint variable. For the estimate of predictive power, the area under the curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis was calculated. The AUC plots accurately identified violent or sexual recidivists and "false positives" at all scale levels. Comparing the predictive validity of these four instruments, the results favored Static-99. As for the limited sample size, differences between the assessment instruments were, however, not statistically significant. The ROC analysis for Static-99 showed that including treatment dropouts does not improve predictive accuracy (including dropouts: AUC 0.710; excluding dropouts: AUC 0.721). Kaplan-Meier survival analyses yielded highly a significant correlation to recidivism time point for two Static-99 and SVR-20 risk categories. Higher-risk categories were related to earlier recidivism. However, relying on the Static-99 and SVR-20 alone showed false positive results: for up to two out of three sex offenders, they predicted recidivism which did not occur.
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