The Development of the VP-SAFvR: An Actuarial Instrument for Police Triage of Australian Family Violence Reports

Abstract

This study describes the rationale, development, and validation of the Victoria Police Screening Assessment for Family Violence Risk (VP-SAFvR). The actuarial instrument was developed on a sample of 24,446 Australian police reports from 2013-2014. Information from each report and criminal histories of those involved were collected with 12-month follow-up, and binary logistic regression used to develop an improper predictive model. The selected VP-SAFvR cut-off score correctly identified almost three quarters of cases with further reports, while half of those without were accurately excluded. It was effective for frontline police triage decision-making, with few screened-out cases reporting further family violence, while those screened-in required additional risk assessment. Predictive validity was adequate and consistent across family relationships and demographic groups, although it was less effective in predicting future family violence reports involving same-sex couples or child perpetrators. Further evaluation in a field trial is necessary to determine the validity of the VP-SAFvR in practice.

Intimate partner homicide risk assessment by police in Spain: the dual protocol VPR5.0-H

“…The effect size and predictive capability (OR = 8.13 and AUC = .80), together with the rest of discrimination and calibration parameters obtained (PPV = .19 and NPV = .97), are also comparable to those of lethal IPV prediction in the few studies that report them, such as the application of Lethality Screen (Messing, Campbell, Sullivan, et al, 2017). These results confirm those obtained in other research (Graham et al, 2019) and show that the specialization of violence risk assessment instruments achieves higher performance parameters (McEwan et al, 2019). It is important to note that, unlike similar studies such as those developed for VPR by estimating recidivism, in the current work most cases were not under police protection or other circumstances that may modify predictive validity results of the instrument.…”

Predictive Validity of the DYRA and SAFVR: New Zealand Police’s Family Violence Risk Assessment Instruments

“…The relative dearth of broader FV risk assessment instruments makes it difficult to situate research findings using such instruments among the siloed bodies of research on IPV and child maltreatment (McEwan et al, 2018). Variables in risk assessment instruments for FV or IPV include criminal history, alcohol or drug use, mental health, suicidal behavior, pregnancy, recent separation, and financial stress (Dowling & Morgan, 2019; Graham et al, 2019; López-Ossorio et al, 2019; Spivak et al, 2020; Steiner et al, 2019).…”

A twist in Intimate Partner Violence Risk Assessment Tools: Gauging the contribution of exogenous and historical variables

“…Only the Portuguese tool RVD resembles this functionality [6]. Second, due to its national implementation and its accuracy, comparable to ODARA, VP-SAFvR, SVRA-I, RVD and Lethality-Screen [26,21,7,6,22]. Finally, because it is developed on a computer system that allows thousands of users to connect at the same time.…”

“…Finally, because it is developed on a computer system that allows thousands of users to connect at the same time. Only Australia (VP-SAFvR [21]) and Israel (SVRA-I [7]) employ a similar system.…”