e Violence Risk Appraisal Guide and Sex Oender Risk Appraisal Guide for Violence Risk Assessment and the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment and Domestic Violence Risk Appraisal Guide for Wife Assault Risk Assessment

In this chapter we describe a family of violence risk assessments developed using similar techniques. All this work is most fully presented in two books (Hilton, Harris, & Rice, 2008; Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 2006). Here, we rst describe two actuarial instruments for the prediction of violent recidivism and then present an actuarial system for the prediction of wife assault recidivism. Among psychologists, the impetus for developing actuarial violence risk assessments began more than a half century ago with the recognition that actuarial methods are generally more accurate than clinical judgment, experience, and intuition (Meehl, 1954; see also Ǽgisdóttir et al., 2006; Grove & Meehl, 1996) and this is especially true for violence risk (Hanson & Morton-Bourgon, 2007; Hilton, Harris, & Rice, 2006).