October 1, 2015

The mysterious nature of the "juvenile sex offender"

New research casts doubt on practical meaningfulness of emergent category

If you ask John Q. Public about the public safety risk posed by a juvenile who has been arrested for a sex offense, chances are he will estimate too high. The public is woefully uninformed when it comes to risk of sexual reoffense in general, and nowhere is the gap between reality and media-driven anxiety wider than in the case of juvenile sex offenders.

Michael Caldwell, a prominent expert on juvenile delinquency at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, has decided to take the bull by the horns and nail down an accurate risk estimate. His goal is to collect and analyze every single study that exists, whether from peer-reviewed and published research or government studies. So far, he's put together an impressive 88 data sets comprising a whopping 25,716 juvenile sex offenders.*

The data are remarkably consistent: Overall, people who committed a sex offense prior to age 18 have less than a 5% risk of being arrested or convicted for another sex offense as an adult.

Although the average followup period in these 88 studies was more than five years, Caldwell says the length of the followup isn't as critical as you might think. That's because risk is highest in the months immediately following the last offense, and plummets dramatically as time goes on.

That's not surprising, given what we know about adolescent immaturity. Juvenile sex offenders are plagued by raging hormones, poor impulse control, and even poorer judgment. Often, their sex offending is part of a broader pattern of general delinquency that includes behavior like stealing, truancy, fighting, rule-breaking and drug use.

But perhaps more remarkable than their low risk for sexual reoffense as adults is the finding by other researchers that most adult men who are arrested for committing sexual offenses were never part of this juvenile sex offender pool in the first place.

In other words, there's a good chance we are looking at apples and oranges -- that most juveniles who are arrested for a sex offense are just screwed-up kids, rather than budding pedophiles or preferential rapists like some adult offenders.

Are juvenile sex offenders special?

Indeed, many scholars of delinquency are coming to the conclusion that the "juvenile sex offender" – a category that has come into vogue largely due to growing interest in adult sex offending over the past couple of decades – may not actually exist as a distinguishable entity.

That would be very good news from a public safety standpoint, because the majority of young people who get into trouble with the law gradually cease offending and fade into the carpet of the community as they mature and settle down into their adult lives.

Amanda Fanniff, of Palo Alto University's Juvenile Forensic Research Group, is one such scholar. She is testing the uniqueness of juvenile sex offenders by comparing them with other delinquent boys from the federally funded Pathways to Desistance project, a large-scale, multi-site, longitudinal study of serious juvenile offenders in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

So far, Dr. Fanniff has not found much to distinguish the 127 boys with sex offenses from the 1,021 boys with serious non-sexual crime, in terms of measurable things like school problems, parental pathology, antisocial history, or deviant peers. 

If anything, based on followup periods averaging about seven years, the juveniles who offended sexually have lower risk of both general and sexual recidivism than the other delinquents, she reported this week to a meeting of the California Coalition on Sex Offending.**

Consistent with other research, Fanniff found that in sheer numbers, more of the juveniles without a prior sex offense case picked up a sex crime as an adult. Out of the 1,148 boys she tracked, 10 sex offenders and 29 general delinquents were arrested for a sex offense during the average 7-year followup period. Because there were far more general delinquents overall, that translates to a sexual recidivism rate of about 8% for the juvenile sex offenders, and 3% for the other boys, or about 3% overall. (See chart, left. The fact that her juvenile sex offenders recidivated at a slightly higher rate than Caldwell's aggregate average likely owes to the small size of her sample, 127 versus his vast pool of 25,716.)

If the perception of uniqueness is just a projection of the beholder's, says Fanniff, we might do better to focus on treatment programs that are proven to work for delinquents, such as multisystemic therapy that targets family and community variables, rather than focusing too heavily on sex offender-specific treatment with its uneven track record and sometimes-counterproductive methods.  

What this growing body of research evidence tells us, agree Fanniff, Caldwell and other researchers such as Jodi Viljoen at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and her colleagues, is that it is extremely hard to accurately identify a juvenile sex offender who is going to reoffend.

The task is so hard, indeed, that even risk assessment instruments designed specifically for this population – like the ERASOR and the J-SOAP – are doomed to fail most of the time.

But from a purely statistical point of view, prediction is actually a no-brainer:

If you bet that any juvenile sex offender is NOT going to reoffend, you will be correct 95% of the time. It's pretty doggone hard to improve on that good news.

* * * * *

*These new data are not yet published. Dr. Caldwell's 2010 review article in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology found the same pattern, but with only 66 data sets comprising about 11,000 offenders.

**Dr. Fanniff's study has been accepted for publication in the Temple Law Review. In the meantime, you can request information from her via email.


September 14, 2015

As courts censure civil detention practices, is it time for professionals to speak up?

Guest commentary by David S. Prescott, LICSW*


David S. Prescott. Photo by J. Lloyd.
Last week, a federal judge ruled that Missouri's civil commitment program is unconstitutional, the second such court decision in three months. For readers unfamiliar with the US civil commitment laws (AKA “SVP” laws), the short version is that 20 states and the federal government have laws that allow states to indefinitely confine sex offenders who are assessed as having a mental diagnosis that predisposes them to commit future sexual violence. There are controversies at every possible turn in these laws, their processes, and subsequent programs, and the US Supreme Court decisions allowing civil commitment have passed by as little as one vote. Because the author was an expert witness in the Missouri case, this essay looks more at the big-picture issues rather than at that specific case. What seems clear is that there is an evolving consensus in the courts that civil commitment as it is being practiced in many places is unconstitutional and that governments and programs must work together closely to rein in widespread abuses.

As in the Minnesota case decided this June, the Missouri case involved a treatment program in operation for many years (roughly 15 in Missouri’s case and 20 in Minnesota’s) from which few have been released and no one has ever been fully discharged. On one hand it is clear that some people who are civilly committed are truly dangerous; I have worked with men who openly vow to re-offend. On the other hand, no bona fide form of treatment takes a minimum of 15 years to complete. Add to this a political climate that is at best unconducive to genuine rehabilitation, and the die for these court decisions was cast long, long ago.

Prison researcher Grant Duwe
For all of our profession's advances in assessment and treatment, we seem to be producing no improved outcomes whatsoever in the civil commitment arena. A study that has not garnered the amount of discussion that it deserves is Grant Duwe’s research finding that only 28% of a sample of civilly committed offenders would likely have re-offended again in their lifetimes, raising questions as to whether states have cast their nets too wide. In a nation in which “Blackstone’s Formulation” -- "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" -- is taught in schools as a fundamental principle of justice, the practice of holding thousands of people indefinitely beyond the expiration of their criminal sentences ought to give anyone pause. In fact, the principle behind Blackstone’s Formulation goes back to antiquity. For example, in the Bible, Genesis 18:23-24 quotes Abraham as asking: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?” What are the implications for civil commitment?

Closer to street level, two cases among many made prominent headlines in Minnesota last year. The first was that of a young man who had sexually abused others at an early age. From a media account:

The four court-appointed experts argued that T’s early sexual offenses as a juvenile were influenced by his own sexual victimization, and that his behavior was likely exacerbated by his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and untreated trauma. The experts also noted that most juveniles who act out sexually do not continue to offend as adults. “There is little evidence to suggest that T is a dangerous sexual offender who poses a significant risk to public safety,” the experts wrote.

Another case involved the only woman civilly committed as a sex offender in that state. From a different news report:

B’s case has proven to be even more vexing for the state….[I]t’s clear officials had little idea what to do or how to treat her.… She suffered a traumatic upbringing: abused by her father, brother and two of her uncles starting as early as 5 years old and continuing through young adulthood. She had a child at 14, and as an adult, sexually abused two boys. [One] of the court-appointed experts … characterized B’s offenses as “reactive” to her trauma as a child. As an adult, B is “flirtatious” and “forward” and easily stimulated in discussions of sexual activities. All of which means that treating her in an all-male program, with group therapy sessions, might have actually made things worse.

Despite expert consensus that continued civil confinement was not likely to be helpful in either case, neither T nor B were released. This represents a trend. Similar cases (such as this other juvenile-only offender or this 65-year-old man who reports being shuffled among no less than 24 therapists in more than two decades of commitment) have been reported in the media, and yet the status quo continues.

Missouri's Sex Offender Rehabilitation and Treatment Services (SORTS). 
Photo credit: Jesse Bogan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Clearly, these cases involve people who are difficult to treat. For a sense of scale, though, the woman described above was civilly committed during Bill Clinton’s first year in office, 22 years ago; others have been committed for even longer. One commentator described the lack of outcry as having the same emotional valence as fishermen noting that they sometimes catch dolphins in their tuna nets. At what point is remaining silent about the judicial findings, and the many task force reports and outside evaluations they rest on, no longer acceptable?

Sadly, the people working at the front lines are often directed by policy and supervisors not to openly discuss these issues. In my experience, some people care more deeply than others about balancing the rights and welfare of the community with the principle of beneficence toward clients in treatment. There is no question that there are good people at the front lines trying to do the right thing and wrestling with deeply personal questions about the way forward. Still, given that two exercises of civil commitment statutes have been deemed unconstitutional -- and in the eyes of many that is another way of saying fundamentally un-American -- questions emerge for all practitioners:

At what point do professionals in these settings openly acknowledge to them/ourselves that we are participating in systems that are openly unconstitutional and therefore unlawful according to the standards of much of the Western world? Even beyond American law, consider the case of Shawn Sullivan, who fled the US and was on Interpol’s most-wanted list. One of the UK’s highest courts denied a U.S. extradition request on the basis that Minnesota's program to commit sex offenders indefinitely to treatment violates European human rights law. From the article:

The case of Shawn Sullivan garnered international headlines
Lord Justice Alan Moses said returning Sullivan for trial with the possibility of later being placed in the sex offender system would be a "flagrant denial of his rights" under European law.

With that in mind, professionals might also want to ask at what point we are violating basic human rights when we render "treatment" that no one can ever complete.

Meanwhile, even in states such as Wisconsin, New York and Texas, where some committed sex offenders have successfully completed treatment and been released into the community, the constitutionality of civil commitment is threatened by broad residency restrictions and policies that severely restrict where these residents can live once discharged.

As a profession, we have the research, the tools, and the templates to provide prompt and adequate treatment and to reduce the harm of sexual abuse, and yet we find ourselves in political climates where we cannot use them. At what point do we as individual professionals, or as professional organizations, take a stand against practices that are clearly not working to anyone’s long-term benefit? One need only look at the recent scandal of the American Psychological Association and its involvement with torture to see how collective inaction can ultimately bring disgrace to a profession.

Personally, my belief is that we all need to talk about these issues much more than we do. Legal action and journal articles are one matter, public dialog is something else. Critical self-examination takes courage. Perhaps it starts with all of us when we say to ourselves: All sexual abuse is unacceptable, but I will not violate the rights of others in the name of reducing harm. It is time to take a stand for the rights of all human beings.


*David Prescott is Director of Professional Development for a youth services organization in New England, and is a widely published author and lecturer on sex offender treatment, motivational interviewing, adolescent offenders and related topics. He was an expert witness in the Missouri class action case decided Sept. 11 by U.S. District Court Judge Audrey Fleissig, Van Orden v. Schafer (the full text of which is available HERE). More information is available at his website. An earlier version of this essay appeared at the blogspot of Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.   

September 3, 2015

Adversarial allegiance: Frontier of forensic psychology research

A colleague recently commented on how favorably impressed he was about the open-mindedness of two other forensic examiners, who had had the courage to change their opinions in the face of new evidence. The two had initially recommended that a man be civilly committed as a sexually violent predator, but changed their minds three years later .

My colleague's admiration was short-lived. It evaporated when he realized that the experts’ change of heart had come only after they switched teams: Initially retained by the government, they were now in the employ of the defense.

"Adversarial allegiance" is the name of this well-known phenomenon in which some experts' opinions tend to drift toward the party retaining their services. This bias is insidious because it operates largely outside of conscious awareness, and can affect even ostensibly objective procedures such as the scoring and interpretation of standardized psychological tests.

Partisan bias is nothing new to legal observers, but formal research on its workings is in its infancy. Now, the researchers spearheading the exploration of this intriguing topic have put together a summary review of the empirical evidence they have developed over the course of the past decade. The review, by Daniel Murrie of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia and Marcus Boccaccini of Sam Houston State University, is forthcoming in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science.

Forensic psychologists’ growing reliance on structured assessment instruments gave Murrie and Boccaccini a way to systematically explore partisan bias. Because many forensic assessment tools boast excellent interrater reliability in the laboratory, the team could quantify the degradation of fidelity that occurs in real-world settings. And when scoring trends correlate systematically with which side the evaluator is testifying for, adversarial allegiance is a plausible culprit.

Daniel Murrie
Such bias has been especially pronounced with the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, which is increasingly deployed as a weapon by prosecutors in cases involving future risk, such as capital murder sentencing hearings, juvenile transfer to adult courts, and sexually violent predator commitment trials. In a series of ground-breaking experiments, the Murrie-Boccaccini team found that scores on the PCL-R vary hugely and systematically based on whether an expert is retained by the prosecution or the defense, with the differences often exceeding what is statistically plausible based on chance.

Systematic bias was also found in the scoring of two measures designed to predict future sexual offending, the popular Static-99 and the now-defunct Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool Revised (MnSOST-R).

One shortcoming of the team’s initial observational research was that it couldn’t eliminate the possibility that savvy attorneys preselected who were predisposed toward one side or the other. To test this possibility, two years ago the team designed a devious experimental study in which they recruited forensic psychologists and psychiatrists and randomly assigned them to either a prosecution or defense legal unit. To increase validity, the experts were even paid $400 a day for their services.

Marcus Boccaccini
The findings provided proof-positive of the strength of the adversarial allegiance effect. Forensic experts assigned to the bogus prosecution unit gave higher scores on both the PCL-R and the Static-99R than did those assigned to the defense. The pattern was especially pronounced on the PCL-R, due to the subjectivity of many of its items. ("Glibness" and "superficiality," for example, cannot be objectively measured.)

The research brought further bad tidings. Even when experts assign the same score on the relatively simple Static-99R instrument, they often present these scores in such a way as to exaggerate or downplay risk, depending on which side they are on. Specifically, prosecution-retained experts are far more likely to endorse use of "high-risk" norms that significantly elevate risk.

Several somewhat complimentary theories have been advanced to explain why adversarial allegiance occurs. Prominent forensic psychologist Stanley Brodsky has attributed it to the social psychological process of in-group allegiance. Forensic psychologists Tess Neal and Tom Grisso have favored a more cognitive explanation, positing heuristic biases such as the human tendency to favor confirmatory over disconfirmatory information. More cynically, others have attributed partisan bias to conscious machinations in the service of earning more money. Murrie and Boccaccini remain agnostic, saying that all of these factors could play a role, depending upon the evaluator and the situation.   

One glimmer of hope is that the allegiance effect is not universal. The research team found that only some of the forensic experts they studied are swayed by which side retains them. Hopefully, the burgeoning interest in adversarial allegiance will lead to future research exploring not only the individual and situational factors that trigger bias, but also what keeps some experts from shading their opinions toward the retaining party.

Even better would be if the courts took an active interest in this problem of bias. Some Australian courts, for example, have introduced a method called "hot tubs" in which experts for all of the sides must come together and hash out their differences outside of court. 

In the meantime, watch out if someone tries to recruit you at $400 a day to come and work for a newly formed legal unit. It might be another ruse, designed to see how you hold up to adversarial pressure.

* * * * *

The article is: Adversarial Allegiance among Expert Witnesses, forthcoming from The Annual Review of Law and Social Science. To request it from the first author, click HERE


Related blog posts:

June 5, 2015

Recommended summer reading

Among a bumper crop of engaging new books, here are a few that stand out as especially relevant to forensic psychologists interested in popular culture: 

Murder as public spectacle


If you want to understand the nature of murder and its resolution in U.S. inner cities, look no further than L.A. Times reporter Jill Leovy's Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America. Leovy embedded herself with detectives in one South Los Angeles precinct to discover the gloomy truth: When the government does not provide strong, centralized justice, people will take the law into their own hands … with tragic results.

Sexual assault, unpunished


With upwards of one in five women raped in their lifetimes, rape is much more common than most people realize, its most frequent victims college-aged women. So, why are so few sexual assaults ever reported to authorities? You will understand why after reading bestselling journalist Jon Krakauer's Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town. This superbly researched account traces the ordeals of a cluster of young college women with the audacity to buck the good-old-boys system in search of justice.

A culture of shaming


And finally, what's up with the culture of public shaming that seems to be strangling popular culture, with shame-laced posts regularly going viral on Twitter and other social media sites? Jon Ronson (whom you'll recall from his quirky bestseller, The Psychopath Test) confronts this nasty epidemic in his engaging new book, So You've Been Publicly Shamed

Quick reads.
Cutting-edge topics.
Recommended.


May 3, 2015

Science reporter delves into shadowy realm of civil commitment

Wayne Hicks and Hersey Lelaind. Illustration by Jenny Chang.
"Hersey Lelaind knew he was in trouble -- just not how much trouble. He and a housemate had been on a drive, and Lelaind had been smoking pot. When they returned to their home in Vacaville, California, the sheriff’s department was waiting…. 

"That was in 2006, when Lelaind was 26 years old. He’s been kept under lock and key ever since. His problem wasn’t the drug bust itself. But the bust prompted the authorities to review Lelaind’s checkered past. As a teenager, he had been convicted for sexual abuse against a minor -- and had served his time. 

"That fact, along with other aspects of his criminal and life history, were entered into the 'Static-99,' a little-known but highly influential questionnaire that critics contend is being tragically misused. The test spit out a score that set him on the path to being locked up in a state psychiatric facility. Why? Because he might commit another crime in the future. He doesn’t know if he will ever be released."

So begins an expose on the U.S. civil commitment industry by Peter Aldhous, an award-winning science writer. Writing for Buzzfeed, Aldhous traces the stories of both Hersey Lelaind, an African American man from San Francisco, and Wayne Hicks, a gay man from the Deep South, to illustrate the life-shattering consequences of getting a bad score on a badly flawed actuarial risk instrument.

The dramatically different outcomes for Lelaind and Hicks underscore the hit-or-miss nature of risk assessment, where the difference between freedom and a life behind bars can be something as random as which evaluator is assigned to the case or what risk tool that evaluator chooses to employ.

The featured narratives hold special significance for me, because I was retained as an expert in each case. Hicks was set free after the federal prosecutor read my report, while Lelaind went to trial and was civilly committed -- despite the fact that he is neither a pedophile nor a rapist.

Word on the street is that the Buzzfeed piece, "These 10 Questions Can Mean Life Behind Bars," is getting a lot of, well, buzz. I encourage readers to share it widely. Hopefully, it can help to foster public and professional dialogue on the implicit biases undergirding the civil commitment enterprise.

April 19, 2015

Static-99: A bumpy developmental path

By Brian Abbott, PhD and Karen Franklin, PhD* 

The Static-99 is the most widely used instrument for assessing sex offenders’ future risk to the public. Indeed, some state governments and other agencies even mandate its use. But bureaucratic faith may be misplaced. Conventional psychological tests go through a standard process of development, beginning with the generation and refinement of items and proceeding through set stages that include pilot testing and replication, leading finally to peer review and formal publication. The trajectory of the Static-99 has been more haphazard: Since its debut 15 years ago, the tool has been in a near-constant state of flux. Myriad changes in items, instructions, norms and real-world patterns of use have cast a shadow over its scientific validity. Here, we chart the unorthodox developmental course of this tremendously popular tool.
 
 
Static-99 and 99R Developmental Timeline
Date
Event
1990
The first Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) law passes in the United States, in Washington. A wave of similar laws begins to sweep the nation.
1997
The US Supreme Court upholds the Constitutionality of preventive detention of sex offenders. 
1997
R. Karl Hanson, a psychologist working for the Canadian prison system, releases a four-item tool to assess sex offender risk. The Rapid Risk Assessment for Sex Offence Recidivism (RRASOR) uses data from six settings in Canada and one in California.[1]
1998
Psychologists David Thornton and Don Grubin of the UK prison system release a similar instrument, the Structured Anchored Clinical Judgment (SACJ- Min) scale.[2]
1999
Hanson and Thornton combine the RRASOR and SACJ-Min to produce the Static-99, which is accompanied by a three-page list of coding rules.[3] The instrument's original validity data derive from four groups of sex offenders, including three from Canada and one from the UK (and none from the United States). The new instrument is atheoretical, with scores interpreted based on the recidivism patterns among these 1,208 offenders, most of them released from prison in the 1970s.
2000
Hanson and Thornton publish a peer-reviewed article on the new instrument.[4]
2003
New coding rules are released for the Static-99, in an 84-page, unpublished booklet that is not peer reviewed.[5] The complex and sometimes counterintuitive rules may lead to problems with scoring consistency, although research generally shows the instrument can be scored reliably.
2003
The developers release a new instrument, the Static-2002, intended to "address some of the weaknesses of Static-99."[6] The new instrument is designed to be more logical and easier to score; one item from the Static-99 – pertaining to whether the subject had lived with a lover for at least two years – was dropped due to issues with its reliability and validity. Despite its advantages, Static-2002 never caught on, and did not achieve the popularity of the Static-99 in forensic settings. 
2007
Leslie Helmus, A graduate student working with Karl Hanson, reports that contemporary samples of sex offenders have much lower offense rates than did the antiquated, non-US samples upon which the Static-99 was originally developed, both in terms of base rates of offending and rates of recidivism after release from custody.[7]
September 2008
Helmus releases a revised actuarial table for Static-99, to which evaluators may compare the total scores of their subjects to corresponding estimates of risk.[8] Another Static-99 developer, Amy Phenix, releases the first of several "Evaluators’ Handbooks."[9]
October 2008
At an annual convention of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA), Andrew Harris, a Canadian colleague of Hanson's, releases a new version of the Static-99 with  three separate "reference groups" (Complete, CSC and High Risk) to which subjects can be compared. Evaluators are instructed to report a range of risks for recidivism, with the lower bound coming from a set of Canadian prison cases (the so-called CSC, or Correctional Service of Canada group), and the upper bound derived from a so-called "high-risk" group of offenders. The risk of the third, or "Complete," group was hypothesized as falling somewhere between those of the other two groups.[10]
November 2008
At a workshop sponsored by a civil commitment center in Minnesota, Thornton and a government evaluator named Dennis Doren propose yet another new method of selecting among the new reference groups.  In a procedure called "cohort matching,” they suggest comparing an offender with either the CSC or High-Risk reference group based on how well the subject matched a list of external characteristics they had created but never empirically tested or validated.[11]
December 2008
Phenix and California psychologist Dale Arnold put forth yet a new idea for improving the accuracy of the Static-99: After reporting the range of risk based on a combination of the CSC and High-Risk reference groups, evaluators are encouraged to consider a set of external factors, such as whether the offender had dropped out of treatment and the offender's score on Robert Hare's controversial Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R). This new method does not seem to catch on.[12] [13]
2009
An official Static-99 website, www.static99.org, debuts.[14]
Winter 2009
The Static-99 developers admit that norms they developed in 2000 are not being replicated: The same score on the Static-99 equates with wide variations in recidivism rates depending on the sample to which it is compared. They theorize that the problem is due to large reductions in Canadian and U.S. recidivism rates since the 1970s-1980s. They call for the development of new norms.[15]
September 2009
Hanson and colleagues roll out a new version of the Static-99, the Static-99R.[16] The new instrument addresses a major criticism by more precisely considering an offender's age at release, an essential factor in reoffense risk.  The old Static-99 norms are deemed obsolete. They are replaced by data from 23 samples collected by Helmus for her unpublished Master's thesis. The samples vary widely in regard to risk. For estimating risk, the developers now recommend use of the cohort matching procedure to select among four new reference group options. They also introduce the concepts of percentile ranks and relative risk ratios, along with a new Evaluators’ Workbook for Static-99R and Static-2002R. Instructions for selecting reference groups other than routine corrections are confusing and speculative. Research is lacking to demonstrate that selecting other than routine corrections reference group produces more accurate risk estimates.[17]
November 2009
Just two months after their introduction, the Evaluators’ Workbook for Static-99R and Static-2002R is withdrawn due to errors in its actuarial tables.[18] The replacement workbook provides the same confusing and speculative method for selecting a nonroutine reference group, a method that lacks scientific validation and reliability.
2010
An international team of researchers presents large-scale data from the United States, New Zealand and Australia indicating that the Static-99 would be more accurate if it took better account of an offender's age.[19] The Static-99 developers do not immediately embrace these researchers' suggestions.
January 2012
Amy Phenix and colleagues introduce a revised Evaluators’ Workbook for Static-99R and Static-2002R.[20] The new manual makes a number of revisions both to the underlying data (including percentile rank and relative risk ratio data) and to the recommended procedure for selecting a reference group. Now, in an increasingly complex procedure, offenders are to be compared to one of three reference groups, based on how many external risk factors they had. The groups included Routine Corrections (low risk), Preselected Treatment Need (moderate risk), and Preselected High Risk Need (high risk). Subsequent research shows that using density of external risk factors to select among the three reference group options is not valid and has no proven reliability.[21]A fourth reference group, Nonroutine Corrections, may be selected using a separate cohort-matching procedure. New research indicates that evaluators who are retained most often by the prosecution are more likely than others to select the high-risk reference group, [22]  which has base rates much higher than in contemporary sexual recidivism studies and will thus produce exaggerated risk estimates.[23]    
July 2012
Six months later, the percentile ranks and relative risk ratios are once again modified, with the issuance of the third edition of the Static-99R and Static-2002R Evaluators’ Handbook.[24] No additional data is provided to justify that the selection of nonroutine reference groups produces more accurate risk estimates than choosing the routine corrections reference group.
October 2012
In an article published in Criminal Justice & Behavior, the developers concede that risk estimates for the 23 offender samples undergirding the Static-99 vary widely. Further, absolute risk levels for typical sex offenders are far lower than previously reported, with the typical sex offender having about a 7% chance of committing a new sex offense within five years. They theorize that the Static-99 might be inflating risk of reoffense due to the fact that the offenders in its underlying samples tended to be higher risk than average.[25]
2012
The repeated refusal of the Static-99 developers to share their underlying data with other researchers, so that its accuracy can be verified, leads to a court order excluding use of the instrument in a Wisconsin case.[26]
October 2013
At an annual ATSA convention, Hanson and Phenix report that an entirely new reference group selection system will be released in a peer-reviewed article in Spring 2014.[27] The new system will include only two reference groups: Routine Corrections and Preselected High Risk High Need.  An atypical sample of offenders from a state hospital in Bridgewater, Massachusetts dating back to 1958 is to be removed altogether, along with some other samples, while some new data sets are to be added.
October 2014
At the annual ATSA convention, the developers once again announce that the anticipated rollout of the new system has been pushed back pending acceptance of the manuscript for publication. Helmus nonetheless presents an overview.[28] She reports that the new system will abandon two out of the current four reference groups, retaining only Routine Corrections and Preselected High Risk Need.   Evaluators should now use the Routine Corrections norms as the default unless local norms (with a minimum of 100 recidivists) are available. Evaluators will be permitted to choose the Preselected High Risk Need norms based on “strong, case-specific justification.” No specific guidance nor empirical evidence to support such a procedure is proffered. A number of other new options for reporting risk information are also presented, including the idea of combining Static-99 data with that from newly developed, so-called "dynamic risk instruments."   
January 2015
At an ATSA convention presentation followed by an article in the journal Sexual Abuse,[29] the developers announce further changes in their data sets and how Static-99R scores should be interpreted. Only two of the original four "reference groups" are still standing. Of these, the Routine group has grown by 80% (to 4,325 subjects), while the High-Risk group has shrunk by 35%, to a paltry 860 individuals. Absent from the article is any actuarial table on the High-Risk group, meaning the controversial practice by some government evaluators of inflating risk estimates by comparing sex offenders' Static-99R scores with the High-Risk group data has still not passed any formal peer review process. The developers also correct a previous statistical method as recommended by Ted Donaldson and colleagues back in 2012,[30] the effect of which is to further lower risk estimates in the high-risk group. Only sex offenders in the Routine group with Static-99R scores of 10 are now statistically more likely than not to reoffend. It is unknown how many sex offenders were civilly committed in part due to reliance on the now-obsolete data.

References


[1] Hanson, R. K. (1997). The development of a brief actuarial risk scale for sexual offense recidivism. (Unpublished report 97-04). Ottawa: Department of the Solicitor General of Canada.
[2] Grubin, D. (1998). Sex offending against children: Understanding the risk. Unpublished report, Police Research Series Paper 99. London: Home Office.
[3] Hanson, R.K. & Thornton, D. (1999).  Static 99: Improving Actuarial Risk Assessments for Sex Offenders. Unpublished paper
[4] Hanson, R. K., & Thornton, D. (2000). Improving risk assessments for sex offenders: A comparison of three actuarial scales. Law and Human Behavior, 24(1), 119-136.
[5] Harris, A. J. R., Phenix, A., Hanson, R. K., & Thornton, D. (2003). Static-99 coding rules: Revised 2003. Ottawa, ON: Solicitor General Canada.
[6] Hanson, R.K., Helmus, L., & Thornton, D (2010). Predicting recidivism amongst sexual offenders: A multi-site study of Static-2002. Law & Human Behavior 34, 198-211.
[7] Helmus, L. (2007). A multi-site comparison of the validity and utility of the Static-99 and Static-2002 for risk assessment with sexual offenders. Unpublished Honour’s thesis, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada.
[8] Helmus, L. (2008, September). Static-99 Recidivism Percentages by Risk Level. Last Updated September 25, 2008. Unpublished paper.
[9] Phenix, A., Helmus, L., & Hanson, R.K. (2008, September). Evaluators’ Workbook. Unpublished, September 28, 2008
[10] Harris, A. J. R., Hanson, K., & Helmus, L. (2008). Are new norms needed for Static-99? Workshop presented at the ATSA 27th Annual Research and Treatment Conference on October 23, 2008, Atlanta: GA. Available at www.static99.org.
[11] Doren, D., & Thornton, D. (2008). New Norms for Static-99: A Briefing. A workshop sponsored by Sand Ridge Secure Treatment Center on November 10, 2008. Madison, WI.
[12] Phenix, A. & Arnold, D. (2008, December). Proposed Considerations for Conducting Sex Offender Risk Assessment Draft 12-14-08. Unpublished paper.
[13] Abbott, B. (2009). Applicability of the new Static-99 experience tables in sexually violent predator risk assessments. Sexual Offender Treatment, 1, 1-24.
[14] Helmus, L., Hanson, R. K., & Thornton, D. (2009). Reporting Static-99 in light of new research on recidivism norms. The Forum, 21(1), Winter 2009, 38-45.
[15] Ibid.
[16] Hanson, R. K., Phenix, A., & Helmus, L. (2009, September). Static-99(R) and Static-2002(R): How to Interpret and Report in Light of Recent Research. Paper presented at the 28th Annual Research and Treatment Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, Dallas, TX, September 28, 2009.
[17] DeClue, G. & Zavodny, D. (2014). Forensic use of the Static-99R: Part 4. Risk Communication. Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, 1(3), 145-161.
[18] Phenix, A., Helmus, L., & Hanson, R.K. (2009, November). Evaluators’ Workbook. Unpublished, November 3, 2009.
[19] Wollert, R., Cramer, E., Waggoner, J., Skelton, A., & Vess, J. (2010). Recent Research (N = 9,305) Underscores the Importance of Using Age-Stratified Actuarial Tables in Sex Offender Risk Assessments. Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 22 (4), 471-490. See also: "Age tables improve sex offender risk estimates," In the News blog, Dec. 1, 2010.
[20] Phenix, A., Helmus, L., & Hanson, R.K. (2012, January). Evaluators’ Workbook. Unpublished, January 9, 2012.
[21] Abbott, B.R. (2013). The Utility of Assessing “External Risk Factors” When Selecting Static-99R Reference Groups. Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology, 5, 89-118.
[22] Chevalier, C., Boccaccini, M. T., Murrie, D. C. & Varela, J. G. (2014), Static-99R Reporting Practices in Sexually Violent Predator Cases: Does Norm Selection Reflect  Adversarial Allegiance? Law & Human Behavior. To request a copy from the author, click HERE.
[23] Abbott (2013) op. cit.
[24] Phenix, A., Helmus, L., & Hanson, R.K. (2012, July). Evaluators’ Workbook. Unpublished, July 26, 2012.
[25] Helmus, Hanson, Thornton, Babchishin, & Harris (2012), Absolute recidivism rates predicted by Static-99R and Static-2002R sex offender risk assessment tools vary across samples: A meta-analysis, Criminal Justice & Behavior. See also: "Static-99R risk estimates wildly unstable, developers admit," In the News blog, Oct. 18, 2012.
[27] Hanson, R.K. & Phenix, A. (2013, October). Report writing for the Static-99R and Static-2002R. Preconference seminar presented at the 32nd Annual Research and Treatment Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, Chicago, IL, October 30, 2013. See also: "Static-99 'norms du jour' get yet another makeover," In the News blog, Nov. 17, 2013.
[28] Helmus, L.M. (2014, October). Absolute recidivism estimates for Static-99R and Static-2002R: Current research and recommendations. Paper presented at the 33rd Annual Research and Treatment Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, San Diego, CA, October 30, 2014.
Hanson, R. K., Thornton, D., Helmus, L-M, & Babchishin, K. (2015). What sexual recidivism rates are associated with Static-99R and Static-2002R scores? Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment, 1-35.
Donaldson, T., Abbott, B., & Michie,  C. (2012). Problems with the Static-99R prediction estimates and confidence intervals. Open Access Journal of Forensic Psychology, 4,
1-23.

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*Many thanks to Marcus Boccaccini, Gregory DeClue, Daniel Murrie and other knowledgeable colleagues for their valuable feedback.  


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Related blog posts:
·        Static-99 "norms du jour" get yet another makeover (Nov. 17, 2013)
·        Age tables improve sex offender risk estimates (Dec. 1, 2010)
·        New study: Do popular actuarials work? (April 20, 2010)
·        Delusional campaign for a world without risk (April 3, 2010)