What Community Supervision Officers Need to Know About Actuarial Risk Assessment and Clinical Judgment

The author reviews the empirical research on the adequacy of both clinical and actuarially based risk assessment and then identifies three impediments to the full implementation of actuarial risk assessment in community corrections: unclear presentations on the purpose of actuarial risk assessments; poor communication of offender risk assessment results; and failure to recognize the importance of clinical judgment (and skill) in the actual risk assessment process.