How Much Risk Can We Take? The Misuse of Risk Assessment in Corrections

The author describes six basic steps to follow in developing a risk assessment, including testing the instrument on your own population and conducting inter-rater reliability and validity tests, and allowing for static and dynamic risk factors. He also identifies the disconnect at federal, state, and local levels of offender risk level and availability of services: high-risk offenders are under-serviced, while low-risk are over-serviced.