ABSTRACT
The criminal justice system has long recognized the value in being able to estimate the likelihood that someone may be violent or engage in criminal behavior. Prosecutors, judges, parole boards, and other legal bodies have a vested interest in determining whether offenders are likely to cause harm in the community, and they look to mental health professionals to aid in these determinations. Several decades ago, mental health professionals were reluctant evaluators of risk, relying on little more than clinical intuition about whether a patient might be dangerous. Early studies showed that these idiosyncratic judgments of risk were not indicative of actual risk and spurred some to suggest that flipping a coin would result in the same accuracy in identifying individuals at risk for violence (Ennis & Litwack, 1974).
