ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the strong predictive accuracy of an earlier version of the Historical Clinical Risk Management (HCR)-20 in assessing recidivism in general offender samples as well as specifically in intellectually disabled offenders. The practitioner experience of the author in conducting criminal, psychiatric, and civil assessments of risk supports the necessity and usefulness of such tools within a robust forensic evaluation. Violent offending shares some of the definitional complications with the behaviours observed within the broad category of ‘violence’, varying in the type of aggression displayed, the level of aggression, and the victim characteristics. Some studies have further argued for specific links between learning difficulties and sex offending against children, suggesting that child sex offenders tend to have lower intelligence quotient scores than sex offenders with adult victims. The incidence rate ratio shows that the relative risk of having a learning disability increases the risk of offending.
