The Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS)

Abstract

The Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS) is a 16-item rating scale designed to assess dynamic risk among adult male sex offenders and degree of change at 6-month intervals during treatment. The purpose of the present study was to examine the psychometric properties of the SOTIPS in a construction sample of 759 adult male sex offenders who were under correctional supervision and enrolled in cognitive-behavioral community treatment in Vermont between 2001 and 2007. The scale showed acceptable interrater reliability. SOTIPS scores at 1, 7, and 13 months after participants began treatment predicted sexual, violent, and any recidivism, and return to prison at fixed 1- and 3-year follow-up periods (AUCs = .60 to .85). Combined SOTIPS and Static-99R scores predicted all recidivism types (AUCs = .67 to .89) and outperformed either instrument alone when both instruments had similar predictive power. Participants who demonstrated treatment progress, as reflected by reductions in SOTIPS scores, showed lower rates of recidivism than those who did not.

Estimating Lifetime and Residual Risk for Individuals Who Remain Sexual Offense Free in the Community: Practical Applications

“…Some of these external factors could be available to evaluators at time of release, such as response to institutional treatment (Olver et al, 2018), or the density of psychologically meaningful risk factors (e.g., Thornton & Knight, 2015). Other variables can only be known after release, such as the quality of their psychological and community adjustment (McGrath, Lasher, & Cumming, 2012) and the receipt of effective community supervision (Duwe & Freske, 2012; Seto, Sandler, & Freeman, 2017). Consequently, evaluators need to consider the empirical risk estimates presented in this article as part of an overall evaluation of risk.…”

Assessing Risk for Sexual Recidivism: Some Proposals on the Nature of Psychologically Meaningful Risk Factors

“…Several third-generation risk tools have been developed for general offenders (e.g., Level of Service/Case Management Inventory, Andrews, Bonta, & Wormith, 2008;OAsys, Howard, 2009); only recently, however, has research focused on third-generation instruments for sexual offenders. Examples of structured risk tools for sexual offenders that meaningfully sample criminogenic needs include STABLE-2007/ ACUTE-2007(Hanson, Harris, Scott, & Helmus, 2007; Structured Risk Assessment (Thornton, 2002a) and its variant, the Structured Assessment of Risk and Need (Webster et al, 2006); the Violence Risk Scale-Sex Offender Version (Olver, Wong, Nicholaichuk, & Gordon, 2007); the Sexual-Violence-Risk Management 20 (Boer, Hart, Kropp, & Webster, 1997); and the Sex Offender Treatment Needs and Progress Scale (McGrath & Cumming, 2003). On average, these frameworks show similar levels of predictive accuracy to static risk factor scales and, in most cases, add incremental predictive validity beyond Static-99 (Beech, Friendship, Erikson, & Hanson, 2002;Olver et al, 2007;Thornton, 2002a).…”

STABLE-2007 Demonstrates Predictive and Incremental Validity in Assessing Risk-Relevant Propensities for Sexual Offending: A Meta-Analysis

“…A meta-analysis by van den Berg and colleagues (2018) found that dynamic tools and dynamic coding protocols predicted recidivism among men convicted of sexual offenses. These measures included, for example, the Risk for Sexual Violence Protocol (Hart et al, 2003), the Structured Risk Assessment–Forensic Version (Thornton & Knight, 2015), the Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (McGrath, Lasher, & Cumming, 2012), the Violence Risk Scale: Sexual Offender version (VRS-SO; Wong, Olver, Nicholaichuk, & Gordon, 2003), and STABLE-2007 (Hanson, Harris, Scott, & Helmus, 2007), the latter being the measure that was the focus of the current review. Some of the dynamic risk measures reviewed by van den Berg et al (2018) were also demonstrated to be incremental to static factors— k (samples) = 52, N = 13,446.…”