ABSTRACT
The prediction of an individual's future dangerousness or risk of seriously reoffending has come to play an increasing role in the United States criminal justice system. This chapter explores psychological research on risk prediction and the advances that have been made in its assessment. It summarizes the limited research indicating how jurors are likely to react to divergent content in psychological expert testimony on dangerousness. The chapter offers suggestions for how the legal system might modify existing standards to better utilize available psychological knowledge. It discusses expert witnesses often use unstructured clinical evaluations as the basis of their dangerousness judgments. Actuarial-based risk predictions of future dangerousness have outperformed unstructured clinical judgments in a number of head-to-head comparisons. A variety of methods exist for predicting risk of future dangerousness. Expert testimony on future dangerousness and violence has become an integral part of the US legal system.
