Recidivism risk assessment has played an essential role in the criminal justice system for many years. Various risk assessment tools have been developed and recalibrated over the years for the purpose. Two such instruments, the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) and the Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG), were both revised before being combined into the VRAG-R. The aim of our study was to evaluate the convergent, discriminant and predictive validity of the SORAG and the VRAG-R in a cohort of 294 released individuals who have sexually offended in French Belgium. Results suggest that the tools have good convergent validity and the ability to discriminate the risk level of individuals who have sexually offended with victims younger than 14 years old, whether intra- or extra-familial, from that of others at higher risk for re-offending. Where predictive validity is concerned, the scores on both instruments predict nonviolent nonsexual recidivism with a large effect size, and general recidivism (any type of recidivism) and violent nonsexual recidivism with a medium effect size. Sexual recidivism is not predicted at a statistically significant level by either the SORAG or the VRAG-R. Violent recidivism (sexual and non-sexual combined) is moderately predicted by the SORAG and the VRAG. However, these predictive qualities vary by the age of the victim. Certain combinations of items can be good predictors. In this regard, the VRAG-R items “failure on conditional release” and “marital status” together constitute a predictive model for general recidivism and sexual recidivism. The addition of the item “age at index offense” improves this model for general recidivism.
Read moreThierry H. Pham
Emotional Content Analysis Among People With Psychopathy During Emotional Induction by the International Affective Picture System
The emotional processes within people with psychopathy have been thoroughly investigated. Although content analysis is an interesting area for evaluating emotional characteristics, few data exist concerning the speech content of people with psychopathy in response to affective and neutral images. Our study population included male forensic inpatients (n = 47) from Centre Régional de soins Psychiatrique, Les Marronniers, Tournai, Belgium. According to their total score, as measured by the Pscyhopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL-R), the inpatients were divided into three groups: Psychopath (n = 24, PCL-R score of ≥25), Intermediate (n = 12, PCL-R score from 15.0 to 24.9), and Nonpsychopath (n = 11, score of ≤14.9). Using Tropes analyses and EMOTAIX scenario tools, we examined each narrative’s emotional characteristics. We tested the hypothesis that people with psychopathy report fewer emotional words on all International Affective Picture System images, particularly on negative-valence images. Generally, our results do not support this hypothesis, that people with psychopathy report fewer emotional words on all images, but rather suggested a specific discordance in the verbal emotional treatment (exclusively PCL-R Interpersonal factor) but not in terms of the subjective evaluation. Moreover, this interpersonal factor was positively correlated with the self-referring pronouns (i.e., I and me) setting, whereas the PCL-R Social Deviance factor was positively correlated with action verbs. Speech outputs of people with psychopathy present specificities in terms of emotional content and verbal setting. The results are congruent with the notion that psychopathy combines both functionality and subtle impairment.
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