By David Riley, Director of Corrections’ Psychological Service
In 2004 an amendment to the Parole Act came into force whereby persons released from a sentence of imprisonment for a sexual offence against a child, could be subjected to an extended period of supervision of up to 10 years. The aim of this legislation was to increase public safety by allowing for the ongoing monitoring and supervision of these offenders well beyond the period which would normally be possible.
The legislation requires that the Court be satisfied that the risk of further offending is such that it “cannot sensibly be ignored” having regard to the “likely nature and gravity” of such further offending. This poses a significant issue for the Department in making an application to the Court for the imposition of an order of an extended supervision, as predicting future risk is difficult and the more specific a prediction to be made, such as that the offending will be sexual and against a child, is even more problematic. There is an abundance of research which shows that unstructured clinical judgement, or the opinions of “professionals” are highly variable and cannot be relied on. When the Court is to make a decision which may involve significant restriction on a person’s liability, and that that restriction can be for as long as ten years as in the case with extended supervision, it is clearly important that every effort be made to provide the Court with the best information possible on which to reach a decision.
The Department’s application has to be supported by an assessment from a “health assessor” in terms of the legislation, and what this means in practice is that a detailed assessment is undertaken by a Departmental psychologist.
Making an assessment of sex offender risk involves two distinct phases. Firstly, there are discrete risk factors which have been shown in numerous studies to be indicative of higher risk. These factors include younger age, the number of previous offences, and the gender of the victim. The Department has been able to modify an existing sex offender risk scale and have this measure scored for all sex offenders electronically. Further, the performance of this measure has been able to be checked against a NZ sex offender population by evaluating how this measure predicted further sexual offending when it was applied to sex offenders released five, 10 and 15 years previously. As has already been noted in this column, it has proved possible to reliably assign sex offenders to one of four categories of risk, ranging from low to high.
Such static measures are only a first step in assessing risk, however, as they only assign people to a certain category of risk, rather than saying anything particular about their personal functioning. Fortunately, more recent work in North America has identified a number of personal characteristics, some of which may change quite rapidly, and some of which are more stable over time, which are also associated with heightened risk of further sex offending. These factors include such things as intimacy deficits, negative social influences, the degree to which a person is able to regulate their sexual impulses, and their general level of self regulation. More acute factors include things like substance abuse, negative mood states and their degree of access to future victims. When these factors are assessed in a structured manner, this adds to the accuracy of the risk assessment, and also enables the Court to gain a clearer picture of the ways in which this particular individual may be at risk of further sexual offending.
It is now three years since this legislation came into force, and the Psychological Service is monitoring the process closely in order that the quality of the assessments provided to the Court can be maintained, and also to enable the ongoing validation of the approach which is being employed.
Got a story for Corrections News or want to request the print edition?
Email commdesk@corrections.govt.nz or phone (04) 460 3365.
ISSN 1178-8453