Shepherd Stephane M, Sullivan Danny
Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia.
Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Australia.
Psychiatr Psychol Law. 2016 Jul 21;24(2):292-301. doi: 10.1080/13218719.2016.1197817. eCollection 2017.
Forensic mental health practitioners are frequently asked to estimate the risk of future violence. Legal decisions concerning the sentencing, management and disposition of offenders often rely on the advice of such testimony. The burgeoning use of violence risk instruments in these settings undoubtedly injects a level of scientific rigour into forensic evaluations for courts and tribunals. Yet scrutiny of the inherent limitations of both risk instruments and the inferences and formulations drawn from them are often veiled by the discipline's endorsement for such approaches. Misconceptions about the validity and dependability of present-day risk assessments and expert infallibility persist. The furtive influences that shape both the (mis)interpretation and miscommunication of risk instruments in legal settings necessitate discussion.
法医精神健康从业者经常被要求评估未来暴力行为的风险。关于罪犯量刑、管理和处置的法律决定往往依赖于此类证词提供的建议。在这些情况下，暴力风险评估工具的大量使用无疑为法庭和裁判庭的法医评估注入了一定程度的科学严谨性。然而，对风险评估工具的固有局限性以及从中得出的推论和结论的审视，往往因该学科对这些方法的认可而被掩盖。对当今风险评估的有效性和可靠性以及专家绝对正确的误解依然存在。在法律环境中，影响风险评估工具（错误）解读和错误传达的隐秘因素需要进行讨论。
