Assignment: Risk Assessment Practices

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Assignment: Risk Assessment Practices essay assignment

What are the strengths and weaknesses of current risk assessment practices? When writing your response, focus on tests designed to assess risk and dangerousness.

The strength of the risk assessment tools is that they provide an accurate assessment of the risk factors that might affect the behavior in the future (Bartol & Bartol, 2008). In addition, using previous behavior, personality traits and familial history are factors that the most common risk factors assessed and this information can be obtained fairly easily.

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Bartol & Bartol (2006) stated that current risk assessment tools use actuarial data, with weaknesses such as “focus[ing] on small number of factors…, are passive predictors, focusing primarily on relatively static variables…, may include risk factors that are unacceptable on legal grounds…, have been developed to predict a specific outcome over a specific period of time in a specific population…, have a restricted definition of violence risk…” (Bartol & Bartol, 2006, p.146). Another weakness of risk assessment tools is that they almost exclusively use PCL-R (Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised).

How can you utilize or build upon the strengths of current risk assessment practices in forensic psychology? How can you account for the weaknesses of current risk assessment practices in forensic psychology? Provide examples and rationales.

“The MacArthur Network research project… the goals were..: (1) to improve the validity of clinical assessment risk, (2) to improve the effectiveness of clinical risk assessment, and (3) to provide useful information for reforming mental health policy. The project resulted in the development of the Multiple Iterative Classification Tree, a means of assessing the likelihood that a mentally disordered individual will engage in future aggressive behavior” (Bartol & Bartol, 2008, p.275).

Which term do you prefer, “prediction of risk” or “assessment of risk”? State your reasons for your opinion.

The difference between the “prediction of risk” and “assessment of risk” is that the “prediction” implies that they can provide a prediction of whether or not a person will be violent again. “Assessment” utilizes past and present behavior to analyze the possibility of inappropriate behavior (Bartol & Bartol, 2006). I prefer the “assessment of risk” because it not only provides the assessment of the level or risk, but also provides risk factors that affect the level of risk and suggestions on how to lower the risk (Bartol & Bartol, 2006).

Assignment: Risk Assessment Practices References

Bartol, A. M., Bartol C.A. (2006). Introduction to Forensic Psychology. Research and Application. Second Edition. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. ISBN: 978-1-4129-5830-1.

Bartol, C.R. & Bartol A.M. (2008). Criminal behavior. A psychosocial approach [Eighth edition]. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-13-239421-9.

Please answer the 3 objectives below in a minimum of 300 words and include references in APA format.
Reply to the two discussions below. The discussions are other students’ reply to the 3 objectives below. You can use their discussions as ideas to generate answers for the 3 objectives.
Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

What are the strengths and weaknesses of current risk assessment practices? When writing your response, focus on tests designed to assess risk and dangerousness.
How can you utilize or build upon the strengths of current risk assessment practices in forensic psychology? How can you account for the weaknesses of current risk assessment practices in forensic psychology? Provide examples and rationales.
Which term do you prefer, “prediction of risk” or “assessment of risk”? State your reasons for your opinion.

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