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This study identified the presence of psychopathy (as measured by the PCL-R/PCL:SV instruments) and antisocial personality disorder (APD) and their relationship with future reconviction in an Australian forensic sample ( N = 136) of patients with a mental disorder. Patients were tracked for over 4 years postrelease to determine associations between a diagnosis of APD/psychopathy and reoffense. Patients with higher psychopathy scores were found to have an increased likelihood of reincarceration, a higher rate of reconviction, and were reconvicted earlier compared with patients with lower psychopathy scores. Patients with APD were more likely to be reconvicted and reincarcerated during the follow-up period than patients without an APD diagnosis. Despite demonstrating associations with general reconviction, the PCL instruments did not exhibit statistically significant relationships with violence. Implications for the clinical identification of personality disordered patients in forensic settings are discussed.

Risk assessment instruments are frequently employed in criminal justice settings to predict recidivism and inform treatment plans for offenders. Modern approaches to risk assessment, (i.e. Structured Professional Judgment and actuarial instruments), have been found to accurately predict recidivism for both juvenile and adult offenders, although concerns have been raised regarding their applicability to Non-White cultural groups. Furthermore, research has suggested that rater bias may impact upon risk assessment scoring in various aspects of the risk assessment process. This paper explores whether rater bias may offer an explanation for the differential application and predictive validity of risk assessment for some cultural groups. Firstly, literature examining the differential scoring of risk assessment instruments across cultures was explored. Following this, existing literature on rater variability in risk assessment – encompassing areas such as interrater reliability, adversarial allegiance, professional override and rater training – was synthesised. Despite the lack of research specifically examining rater cultural bias in risk assessment, this paper finds that the risk assessment process may be vulnerable to rater biases. At the very least, the notion of rater cross-cultural bias in risk assessment warrants further investigation, and suggestions for future research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Historical Clinical Risk Management-20 (HCR-20) is utilised internationally to assess an individual's risk for violence. Despite being widely administered in Australian correctional and forensic populations, the predictive validity of the HCR-20 instrument has never been explored in Australian settings. This retrospective study investigated the predictive validity of the HCR-20 for an Australian cohort of 136 forensic psychiatric patients. Findings support the relationship between the HCR-20 and violent offending post hospital discharge. The HCR-20 Total, Historical, and Risk Management scales shared moderate to large positive correlations with several reconviction categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Possessing a strong cultural identity has been shown to protect against mental health symptoms and buffer distress prompted by discrimination. However, no research to date has explored the protective influences of cultural identity and cultural engagement on violent offending. This paper investigates the relationships between cultural identity/engagement and violent recidivism for a cohort of Australian Indigenous people in custody.Methods: A total of 122 adults from 11 prisons in the state of Victoria completed a semi-structured interview comprising cultural identification and cultural engagement material in custody. All official police charges for violent offences were obtained for participants who were released from custody into the community over a period of 2 years.Results: No meaningful relationship between cultural identity and violent recidivism was identified. However a significant association between cultural engagement and violent recidivism was obtained. Further analyses demonstrated that this relationship was significant only for participants with a strong Indigenous cultural identity. Participants with higher levels of cultural engagement took longer to violently re-offend although this association did not reach significance.Conclusions: For Australian Indigenous people in custody, 'cultural engagement' was significantly associated with non-recidivism. The observed protective impact of cultural engagement is a novel finding in a correctional context. Whereas identity alone did not buffer recidivism directly, it may have had an indirect influence given its relationship with cultural engagement. The findings of the study emphasize the importance of culture for Indigenous people in custody and a greater need for correctional institutions to accommodate Indigenous cultural considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study sought to ascertain the prevalence of protective factors and association with client risk level and future offending in a sample of 177 Australian youth in detention. The Protective Domain on the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) instrument was utilized to identify protective items in the cohort. The mean number of protective factors for the entire sample was low (under two) with higher risk clients averaging less than one current protective item. Although the number of protective factors engendered criminal desistance, this effect did not extend to the highest risk young offenders. Clients who re-offended were significantly less likely to present with five out of the six SAVRY protective items. In addition, pro-social involvement and school engagement had the strongest associations with non re-offense. Clinical implications for client risk management are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the convergent validity of 2 youth psychopathy instruments, the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL: YV) and the Youth Psychopathic Trait Inventory (YPI) and their relationship with problem behaviors and recidivism in an Australian sample of young offenders in custody. The PCL: YV demonstrated a capacity to identify severely antisocial youth; however, the tool was unable to differentiate between potentially psychopathic and nonpsychopathic antisocial youth. The YPI was receptive to a wide variety of problem behaviors which precluded the unique identification of core psychopathic traits in the sample. Both instruments were unable to meaningfully distinguish between recidivists and nonrecidivists. As such, the PCL: YV and the YPI demonstrate limited utility for antisocial young offenders in custody. Further research on the durability and developmental manifestation of psychopathy in adolescents is necessary before these instruments are employed in similar contexts. Implications for the clinical use of psychopathy measures are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article outlines the current utility of Indigenous culturally specific risk factors for violence and the ramifications for cross-cultural risk prediction. The Indigenous culturally specific violence risk factor literature has provided a rich body of contextual information outlining Indigenous patterns of criminal behaviour. This information has the capacity to facilitate offender responsivity and treatment targets in addition to assisting clinicians identify the presence of risk markers among Indigenous clients. However, if intended for inclusion in risk prediction models, culturally specific risk items then require further quantitative analysis to establish robust associations and probability estimates for recidivistic outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Validation literature on the predictive ability of North American youth violence risk assessment inventories is developing across international settings. Yet no information exists on the utility of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV),]and little research has been conducted on the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) across Australian young offender populations. The current study investigated the validity of the risk instruments on 213 young people in detention in Victoria, Australia. Findings indicated moderate to strong predictive accuracy for re-offence outcomes across the three inventories for the total sample and for males. The SAVRY was also able to identify the strength of protective factors for young female offenders. The inventories appear to be suitable prediction aides in the Australian youth justice context although further research is required to ascertain their applicability to Australian young female offenders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In light of the growing number of youth violence instruments at a clinician’s disposal, this study sought to investigate the interchangeability of two widely validated adolescent violence risk instruments. The concurrent and incremental validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) were evaluated in a young Australian custodial population. A significant degree of dimensional construct overlap between instruments was discovered. Both measures were similarly found to be moderately predictive of general and violent recidivism. Findings indicate that the instruments are potentially substitutable when used to evaluate future violence in these settings. Clinical implications for risk assessment practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]