Using Multiple Actuarial Instruments to Assess Sexual Recidivism Risk
This webinar is for professionals involved in the assessment and treatment of individuals who have committed sexual offenses. This may include psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, and other mental health professionals.
In this brief presentation, David Thornton talks about the need to use multiple static actuarial instruments in carrying out psychosexual assessments to aid sentencing, prioritize treatment approaches, or in the context of potential SVP commitment.
Common practice has been to use a single instrument to assess the static component of risk. However, there are now three robustly validated static actuarial instruments: the Static-99R, the Static-2002R, and the Risk Matrix 2000. Comparing them indicates that it is not uncommon for them to assign quite different levels of risk. A person might be in the Average category on one instrument, the Above Average category on a second instrument, and the Well Above Average category on a third. These differences are large enough to have important practical implications.
This presentation explains this inconsistency and presents practical strategies for producing an assessment that better reflects the risk of the person being assessed.
Who's Presenting
David Thornton PhD
Dr. Thornton is a psychologist in private practice based in Wisconsin. He is licensed to practice as a psychologist in Wisconsin and Minnesota in the U.S., as well as in the U.K. He was a research director for Wisconsin’s program for sexually violent persons for three years and previously was the treatment director for that program for over a decade. He has published on evidence-based standards for effective correctional programs and on the importance of therapist style in the provision of treatment designed to reduce sexual recidivism risk. He has contributed to the development of static actuarial risk assessment instruments such as the Static-99/R, Static-2002/R, and Risk Matrix 2000 and to more psychological forms of assessment such as the assessment of long-term vulnerabilities and dynamic protective factors relevant to sexual offending. David Thornton has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles.