Treatment of Sex Offenders

3 Strengths of Actuarial Risk Assessment
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The interrater reliability for the CBR total score ranged from moderate
(ICC = 0.60) in the development sample to excellent (ICC = 0.89) in the crossvalidation
sample. For risk communication the authors provide estimated recidivism
rates for each CBR score after 5 and 10 years. Further, the CBR was found to
provide significant incremental validity and to improve the predictive accuracy of
the Static-99R risk assessment tool (Dahle et al., 2014 ). Accordingly, the authors of
the CBR recommend using the published nominal risk categories of the Static-99R
(Helmus, Thornton et al., 2012 ) as an initial assessment of recidivism risk and
adjusting the risk level according to the CBR score to obtain a better overall evaluation
of recidivism risk. Hence, the assessment of sexual recidivism risk using different
sources of information should yield a better understanding of the recidivism
risk that emanates from a specific offender.
Stable-2007
The Stable-2007 (Hanson, Harris, Scott, & Helmus, 2007 ) is an interview- and filereview-
based instrument designed to assess stable (i.e., medium- to long-term)
dynamic risk factors for sexual recidivism, which are unlikely to change without
deliberate effort (i.e., treatment targets; Hanson & Harris, 2013 ). Items are scored
on a 3-point scale ranging from “0, no problem;” “1, maybe/some,” to “2, yes, definite
problem.” The instrument contains 13 items divided into the 5 subsections of
significant social influences, intimacy deficits (i.e., capacity for relationship stability,
emotional identification with children, hostility toward women, general social
rejection/loneliness, and lack of concern for others), sexual self-regulation (i.e., sex
drive/preoccupation, sex as coping, and deviant sexual interests), general selfregulation
(i.e., impulsive acts, poor cognitive problem-solving, and negative emotionality/hostility),
and cooperation with supervision. The total score is obtained by
summing all items and can range from 0 to 26 for offenders with a child victim and
0 to 24 for other offender types (the item emotional identifi cation with children is
scored only for offenders with a child victim). The Stable-2007 can inform decisions
about treatment targets as well as about moderate- to long-term recidivism
potential with higher scores indicating greater risk of sexual recidivism. In addition
to detailed coding rules for each item, the Stable-2007 scoring manual also includes
sample interview questions, practice cases, reporting suggestions, and advice for
maintaining high quality risk assessments (Fernandez et al., 2014 ).
Excellent interrater reliability has been found for the Stable-2007 total score
(ICC > 0.75; Fernandez, 2008 ; Hanson et al., 2007 ). The predictive accuracy of the
Stable-2007 for sexual recidivism was found to range from moderate (e.g.,
AUC = 0.67; Hanson et al., 2015 ) to high (e.g., AUC = 0.71; Eher, Matthes,
Schilling, Haubner- MacLean, & Rettenberger, 2012 ).
For risk communication the authors provide nominal risk categories for the
Stable-2007 as follows: 0–3 = low need, 4–11 = moderate need, and 12 or
greater = high need, as well as percentiles (Fernandez et al., 2014 ). Hanson et al. ( in