Probleme der Prognose von Gewalt durch psychisch Kranke
In: Journal für Konflikt- und Gewaltforschung: Journal of conflict and violence research, Band 5, Heft 1, S. 97-126
ISSN: 1438-9444
In many societies, legislators try to reduce the number of criminal acts, especially acts of violence, by laws requiring the assessment & prediction of dangerousness of individuals known for criminal violence. The paper discusses the problems of predicting criminal violence by mentally ill subjects. After elaborating the intricate theoretical & methodological difficulties facing any variant of prediction of behavior the author explains why it is so difficult to compare the predictive power of several prediction instruments. Such a comparison is essential for any attempt to determine the most powerful instrument for special groups of subjects. In the second part the paper documents & discusses the power of several new instruments (VRAG, HCR-20, PCL-R for instance) predicting violence of mentally ill patients. Though when using these prediction instruments the results in most cases are superior to mere chance models they leave a lot of serious questions open because even the better instruments are confronted with the problem to combine a moderate sensitivity with an intolerable rate of false positive or a high rate of negative prediction with an intolerable low positive prediction rate. 3 Tables, 68 References. Adapted from the source document.