RT Article
T1 Forensic Experts’ Perspectives on Australian Indigenous Sexual Offenders and Factors Important in Evaluating the Risk of Recidivism
JF International journal of offender therapy and comparative criminology
VO 65
IS 15
SP 1653
OP 1675
A1 Allan, Alfred
A1 Parry, Cate L.
A1 Tubex, Hilde
A1 Spiranovic, Caroline
A1 Morgan, Frank
A2 Parry, Cate L.
A2 Tubex, Hilde
A2 Spiranovic, Caroline
A2 Morgan, Frank
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1773821660
AB Law and ethics require that risk assessment should be cross-culturally valid and fair, but Australian research in this regard is underdeveloped. A logical first step in progressing the work required to build a strong evidence base on culturally sensitive risk assessment in Australia is to determine the expert views of those in the field. We interviewed 13 Australian evaluators who assess Indigenous sexual offenders’ recidivism risk to determine their perceptions of the risk assessment instruments they use and the attributes they believe evaluators doing cross-cultural assessments should have. Our central findings are that evaluators use the available instruments because they believe that the same factors predict sexual recidivism for Indigenous and non-Indigenous offenders, but that they do so cautiously knowing the limitations of the instruments. Evaluators nevertheless want more research data to guide them when they use the available instruments to assess people from cultures that differ from those of people in the normative sample. Participants acknowledge that the unique challenges of assessing Indigenous sexual offenders require non-Indigenous evaluators to be culturally competent and confident. These findings should be valuable to evaluators and those who train or supervise evaluators and/or intend to establish or improve the validity of risk instruments in Australia.
K1 Sexual Offenders
K1 Risk assessment
K1 Recidivism
K1 Indigenous
K1 Culture
K1 Ancestry
DO 10.1177/0306624X20967941