Cost of care of patients with personality disorders in forensic psychiatric hospitals in the Netherlands.

Background: Ter beschikking stelling (TBS) clinics form the mainstay of forensic psychiatric services in the Netherlands. Their costs are rising, but little is known about how these costs are distributed.

Aim: To determine the distribution of service costs for patients with personality disorders in TBS medium security units in the Netherlands.

Static and dynamic patient characteristics as predictors of criminal recidivism: A prospective study in a Dutch forensic psychiatric sample.

If clinicians in forensic psychiatry want to reduce risk of reoffending in their patients, they require insight into dynamic risk factors, and evidence that these add predictive power to static risk indicators. Predictors need to be evaluated under clinically realistic circumstances. This study aimed to validate dynamic and static variables as predictors of reconviction in a naturalistic outcome study.

The structural coherence of clinically derived dynamic indicators of reoffending risk.

Background: Forensic psychiatrists aim to reduce the risk of reoffending through treatment. With few exceptions, research evidence tends to favour risk assessment aids reliant on fixed historical rather than clinical data, but transparency in the making of clinical judgements is lacking.

Aims: To evaluate further a clinically derived 47-item dynamic risk assessment checklist; specifically to test first whether it has a meaningful dimensional structure and, second, the extent to which items and underlying dimensions are associated with a separate, direct clinical judgement of risk of reoffending.