Evaluator Disagreement about the Association between Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Scores and Risk for Future Sexual Violence.

It is common for forensic evaluators to use assessment instruments in risk assessment evaluations. This study examines whether different evaluators use instrument results the same way when coming to conclusions about risk for sexual recidivism in Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) evaluations. Three evaluators who each used both the Static-99R and Psychopathy Checklist-Revised in more than 60 SVP evaluations (Total  = 338) provided data for the study.

Assessment of malingering with repeat forensic evaluations: patient variability and possible misclassification on the SIRS and other feigning measures.

Patients with Axis I disorders often fluctuate markedly in their clinical presentations in forensic and other professional settings. Although such fluctuations could suggest ineffectual efforts at malingering, more likely explanations include confusion or poor insight into psychopathology, imprecision in the assessment methods, or actual changes in symptomatology. An important concern is whether such fluctuations, common in repeat forensic evaluations, might lead to false-positive results-specifically, the misclassifications of patients as malingerers.

Assessing risk in adolescent sexual offenders: recommendations for clinical practice.

Accurately predicting the likelihood that an adolescent with a sex offense history will reoffend is a precarious task that carries with it the potential for extreme consequences for the adolescent offender (e.g., lifelong public registration).