NCJ Number
192463
Journal
Law and Human Behavior Volume: 25 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2001 Pages: 629-645
Date Published
December 2001
Length
17 pages
Annotation
This study cross-validated two actuarial risk-assessment tools -- the RRASOR (Rapid Risk Assessment of Sexual Offense Recidivism) and the Static-99 -- in a retrospective follow-up (mean follow-up time of 3.69 years) of all sex offenders released from Swedish prisons during 1993-97 who were males older than 18 years (n=1,400).
Abstract
File-based data were collected by a researcher who was "blind" to the outcome (registered criminal recidivism) and to individual risk factors. Both the RRASOR and the Static-99 showed similar and moderate predictive accuracy for sexual reconvictions; whereas, the Static-99 exhibited a significantly higher accuracy for the prediction of any violent recidivism compared to the RRASOR. Although the Static-99 proved moderately robust as an actuarial measure of recidivism risk among sex offenders in Sweden, both procedures may require further evaluation with sex offender subpopulations that differ ethnically or with respect to offense characteristics. The study concluded that the RRASOR or the Static-99 cannot be used as stand-alone devices for "rule-out" decisions. For certain types of "rule-in" decisions, however, the potential consequences of incorrect risk assessment were less catastrophic. These include intake risk screening for decisions on where to place inmates and which inmates to target for further evaluation and treatment. For these contexts, the findings indicate the Static-99 in particular could be helpful, since it had a higher sensitivity in correctly identifying actual recidivists compared to the RRASOR. 4 tables and 34 references