NCJ Number
123071
Date Published
1990
Length
19 pages
Annotation
Following the presentation and explanation of 14 questions a clinician should ask in assessing the violence potential of a person, the assessment is illustrated in a case example, followed by a sample clinician's report on the case.
Abstract
Some of the questions pertain to professional competence in estimating the probability of future violence, personal and professional ethics, the appropriateness of the case for a prediction, and precipitating events that raised the issue of the subject's potential for future violence. Other issues raised in the questions involve the subject's relevant demographic characteristics, the person's history of violent behavior, the base rate of violent behavior among those having the subject's background, and cognitive and affective factors that indicate the subject may be predisposed to cope with stress in a violent manner. Another question regards the similarity of the contexts in which the subject has behaved violently in the past to the contexts in which the subject will function in the future. 32 references.