Assessing the Risk of Australian Indigenous Sexual Offenders Reoffending: AReview of the Research Literature and Court Decisions

摘要

The assessment of offenders’ risk of reoffending, particularly sexual reoffending, is acore activity of forensic mental health practitioners. The purpose of these assessments isto reduce the risk of harm to the public, but they are controversial and become morecontentious when Australian practitioners who want to undertake such assessments in anethically responsible way must use reliable validated instruments, disclose thelimitations of their assessment methods, instruments and data to judicial decision-makersand understand how decision-makers might use their reports. The purpose of this systematicliterature review was to explore the practices of Australian practitioners and courts inrespect of the assessment of Australian Indigenous male sexual offenders’ risk ofreoffending. We could not identify an instrument that has been developed for theassessment of this population group. Australian courts differ in whether they admit andgive weight to practitioners’ evidence and opinions based on data obtained withnon-validated instruments. We could only identify three possible predictor variables withenough quantitative support to justify including them in an instrument that could be usedto assess Indigenous sexual offenders. There is a need for research regarding the validityof the instruments that practitioners use.