Innovative international risk assessment service is expanding

Try your hand at answering these questions:

1. When evaluating Aboriginal offenders, how valid are standard risk assessment protocols? 


2. Among Canadian men, how well does the Danger Assessment (DA) predict domestic violence? 


3. For sex offenders in Vermont, what instrument is more accurate than the widely used Static-99 for predicting recidivism? 


4. In screening U.S. soldiers coming back from Afghanistan, is there a valid tool that would help allocate limited therapeutic resources in order to decrease violence risk? 


5. Finally, what the heck are the Y-ARAT, the CuRV, the START, and the VIO-SCAN, and what (if anything) are they good for?

With the frenetic pace of risk assessment research and practice developments, you couldn't be faulted for not knowing the correct answers to all of the above questions. Hardly anyone does.

That’s where the Executive Bulletin comes in.

Back in February, I told you about the launch of this service for clinicians, attorneys and researchers who want to stay abreast of developments in the field of risk assessment. The publishers scour more than 80 professional journals and create a one-page summary for each article relevant to violence and sex offending risk assessment among adults and juveniles. Using an appealing, easy-to-read format, each summary highlights the study's clinical implications and relevant legal questions, while minimizing statistical jargon. 

In the months since my announcement, the Bulletin has been gaining traction around the world. It now reaches more than 11,000 practitioners, researchers, and policymakers in the United States, Australia, China, Hong Kong, Spain, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Argentina, Israel, the Netherlands, Mexico, Lithuania, Norway and Denmark. Among its largest subscribers are the California Department of State Hospitals -- which requires that its forensic evaluators read each monthly issue in order to stay abreast of peer-reviewed research into evidence-based practice -- and the public-policy oriented Council of State Governments in the United States.

The newly rebranded Global Institute of Forensic Research (GIFR), with the ever-energetic forensic psychologist Jay Singh at its helm, is currently rolling out a new features and services, including a new website, a podcast version of the Bulletin for commuters, and expert risk assessment trainings (free to subscribers) that are eligible for continuing education credits from the American Psychological Association and the Canadian Psychological Association.

The service is subscription-based. At $35 per month (and $350 for group subscriptions) it isn’t cheap, but Dr. Singh points out that the alternatives are also costly. It’s both costly and time consuming to stay abreast of important risk-related articles from more than 80 journals, most of them fee-based. Thus, without a synthesizing service such as the Bulletin, practitioners risk falling behind and inadvertently violating relevant standards of practice.

Among my own main concerns if I am going to allow someone else to find and synthesize research for my consumption is the degree of fidelity and expertise that the reviewer brings to bear. Here, the field is fortunate to have someone upon whom we can confidently rely. What I find most valuable about the Bulletin is the level of critical analysis that the expert reviewers bring to bear on each of the 15 or 20 articles they summarize each month. (Indeed, my confidence is why I accepted an invitation a while back to serve on the Institute’s advisory board.)

Singh, an epidemiology professor at Molde University in Norway, has published more than 40 cutting-edge articles on violence prediction (a few of which I have featured in prior blog posts). Formerly a fellow of the Florida Mental Health Institute and a Senior Researcher in Forensic Psychiatry for the Swiss Department of Corrections in Zurich, he has also trained and lectured widely on mental illness and violence, including at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, and the University of Pennsylvania.

To date, his Institute has conducted exclusive interviews on tips and tricks in forensic assessment with leading practitioners and scholars including Jodi Viljoen, Nicholas Scurich, Annelies Vredeveldt and -- most recently -- Jennifer Lanterman of the University of Nevada at Reno. Next month’s featured expert is Seena Fazel of Oxford University. You can browse the website and find a sample issue HERE.

If you decide to sign up (or, better yet, get your institution to sign up), Singh is offering my blog readers and subscribers a special 10 percent discount. Just click on THIS LINK, and enter the discount code INTHENEWS.