Risk assessment of sexual offenders is an important topic in forensic psychiatry and psychology. Practitioners are given the responsibility of completing risk assessments of offenders to try to maximize public safety and encourage responsible management, both of which depend on effective intervention and supervision. The basis of the development of the Sexual Violence Risk-20 (SVR-20) was to utilize structured professional judgment (SPJ) to inform risk management to, in turn, maximize public safety, the latter being viewed as the ultimate objective of all risk assessment work. This article focuses on the SVR-20 and its revised version, discussing its guidelines.
SVR-20 Guidelines
The SPJ approach to risk assessment exemplified by the SVR-20 is based on the use of structured clinical guidelines to help the assessor formulate a risk depiction of the individual being assessed. The use of such guidelines assumes that (a) the assessment is being done by a professional who has been trained, (b) the guidelines include the most important risk factors that should be minimally considered by the evaluator, and (c) the evaluator must use discretion as to how information regarding risk factors is to be combined through the SPJ approach to reach final judgments regarding risk.
The SVR-20 guidelines for assessing risk of sexual violence have been widely adopted by clinicians around the world because of the flexibility of the method. The instrument allows for the analysis of various aspects of risk including not just likelihood of reoffense, but also nature, imminence, victim specificity, and severity (e.g., lethality). The SVR-20 guidelines also allow assessors to consider a range of factors that are relevant to the risk assessment at hand, including issues related to sexual disorders (paraphilias) that may be reflected in criminal behavior, such as sadism, fetishism, or pedophilia, all of which help to inform the risk management of the individual being assessed.
The original SVR-20, published in 1997, comprised 20 risk factors in three domains: Psychosocial Adjustment, Sexual Offenses, and Future Plans. The domain of Psychosocial Adjustment included sexual deviation, victim of child abuse, psychopathy, major mental illness, substance use problems, suicidal/homicidal ideation, relationship problems, employment problems, past nonsexual violent offenses, past nonviolent offenses, and past supervision failures. Sexual Offenses included high-density sex offenses, multiple sex offense types, physical harm to victims in sex offenses, use of weapons or threats of death in sex offenses, escalation in frequency or severity of sex offenses, extreme minimization or denial of sex offenses, and attitudes that support or condone sex offenses. Future Plans included lacks realistic plans and negative attitude toward intervention. The inclusion of each item was supported by the systematic review of the scientific and professional literatures.
Since its publication, and despite some criticisms, the SVR-20 has been evaluated by a variety of researchers in a variety of sites internationally and is considered the best validated SPJ for the risk assessment of sexual offenders. There are a large number of studies showing good to excellent levels of interrater reliability. According to several empirical studies and meta-analyses, judgments of risk made using the SVR-20 have predictive validity that is comparable to other risk assessment instruments.
Revised Version
In 2017, the SVR-20 was updated in a second version to reflect developments in the research literature and changes in treatment foci over the past decade. Although the content of the second version of SVR-20 is similar to that of the original guidelines in broad terms, a number of specific changes were made: The definitions of some risk factors were clarified; the three specific risk factors related to general criminality (i.e., past nonsexual violent offenses, past non-violent offenses, and past supervision failures) were collapsed to create a more general risk factor nonsexual criminality; and two new risk factors (reflecting problems related to sexuality and sexual offenses) were added to the instrument (sexual health problems and psychological coercion in sexual offending).
In the second version of the SVR-20, the domain of Psychosocial Adjustment includes sexual deviation, sexual health problems, victim of child abuse, psychopathic personality disorder, major mental illness, substance abuse problems, suicidal/homicidal ideation, relationship problems, employment problems, and nonsexual offending. Sexual Offenses include chronic sexual offending, diverse sexual offending, physical harm in sexual offending, psychological coercion in sexual offending, escalation in sexual offending, extreme minimization or denial of sexual offenses, and attitudes that support or condone sexual offences. Future Plans include lacks realistic plans, negative attitudes toward intervention, and negative attitude toward supervision. The revisions ensure that the SVR-20 is comprehensive in scope, sensitive to both dynamic and static aspects of risk, and useful in the development of risk management plans.
Criticisms
It is likely that the second version of the SVR-20 will be subject to the same criticisms as the original manual. First, some critics will object to the inclusion of risk factors in the guidelines that are not established in the scientific literature as significant predictors of sexual reoffense. Because the revised SVR-20—like the original— uses a broad definition of sexual violence risk, the risk factors may be predictive of the nature, severity, or imminence of reoffense, rather than the likelihood, or the factors may be related to risk management rather than the likelihood of reoffense.
Second, some will object to the fact that the guidelines will be published without validation research. This criticism reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the SPJ approach. It is true that the content of both the original and the second version of the SVR-20 was not based on a single piece of empirical research; instead, they were based on a systematic review of scores—even hundreds—of empirical studies as well as a review of the professional literature.
Third, some will object to the fact that the revised SVR-20 will not yield a quantitative estimate of the probability of reoffense. This is correct; the goal of both versions of the SVR-20 is to guide risk management decisions and prevent reoffense, not to predict what might happen if the offender were provided treatment or simply monitored— most of the Actuarial risk assessment instruments (ARAIs) do not differentiate risk across such clearly different scenarios, hence limiting their usefulness for risk management. The second version also provides the user with example worksheets for gathering information, coding the presence of risk factors (past and recent presence), and formulating conclusory opinions.
Research
In 2007, Karl Hanson and Kelly Morton-Bourgon Robert suggested that “for those wishing to understand their cases, there are a number of risk assessment tools available, although the research on these instruments is much less developed than the research on empirical actuarial measures (i.e., ARAIs)” (p. 16), and these authors go on to suggest the SVR-20 as one such measure (that presumably would help assessors understand their cases). However, it is clear that practitioners who conduct risk assessments do wish to understand the uniqueness of their cases. The SVR-20 instruments provide a framework for that understanding.
The SVR-20 was promoted initially as an aide-mémoire or report-writing assessment and guide. Early findings showed that the risk levels reached by SPJ based on supervision and treatment needs were found to have good predictive validity. A large amount of independent research has shown that well-guided professional judgment permits clinicians to make allowances for the uniqueness of their clients and that such judgments have better predictive validity than actuarial tests on average. Logically, this makes some sense: The individual is never accurately represented by the group average; and the corollary is also true, a group of individual predictions (e.g., via the S VR-20) ought to outperform a group average (when the SVR-20 is used actuarially it does not predict as well as when it is used in a SPJ manner). Regardless of the state of the risk assessment literature, courts and parole boards around the world demand risk assessments from psychologists and psychiatrists on which to base their decisions. It is the responsibility of these psychologists and psychiatrists to provide their best risk formulation on the patient while acknowledging the limitations of the field. Furthermore, it is also their responsibility to advise policy and law makers regarding effective risk methodologies and to encourage research in this regard. To that end, the SVR-20 not only provides a basis for decisions that affect an offender’s life but also decisions that could affect the life of potential victims.
References:
- Boer, D. P., Hart, S. D., Kropp, P. R., & Webster, C. D. (1997). Manual for the Sexual Violence Risk-20: Professional guidelines for assessing risk of sexual violence. Vancouver, Canada: The Mental Health, Law, and Policy Institute.
- Boer, D. P., Hart, S. D., Kropp, P. R., & Webster, C. D. (2017). Manual for Version 2 of the Sexual Violence Risk-20: Professional guidelines for assessing risk of sexual violence. Vancouver, Canada: Protect International Risk and Safety Services.
- de Vogel, V., de Ruiter, C., van Beek, D., & Mead, G. (2004). Predictive validity of the SVR-20 and Static-99 in a Dutch sample of treated sex offenders. Law and Human Behavior, 28(3), 235–251. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1023/B:LAHU.0000029137.41974.eb
- Hanson, R. K., & Morton-Bourgon, K. E. (2007). The accuracy of recidivism risk assessments for sexual offenders: A meta-analysis. Ottawa, Canada: Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.
- Hart, S. D., Michie, C., & Cooke, D. J. (2007). Precision of actuarial risk assessment instruments. British Journal of Psychiatry, 190, 49, 60–65. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.190.5.s60
- Hill, A., Habermann, N., Klusmann, D., Berner, W., & Briken, P. (2008). Criminal recidivism in sexual homicide perpetrators. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 52, 5–20.
- Litwack, T. R. (2001). Actuarial versus clinical assessments of dangerousness. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 7(2), 409–433.