Domestic assault risk assessment

Samenvatting

The editors are indebted to the Achmea Foundation Victim and Society (Stichting Achmea Slachtoffer en Samenleving: SASS) for facilitating two independent, large scale prospective projects among female victims involved in domestic violence. More than 1200 victims have been involved in these two three-wave studies. The focus of both studies has been on the identification of victim-related risk factors for immediate and longer term repeat victimization, and on examining the predictive validity of various forensic risk assessment tools, that have been developed for psychologists and "lay" assessors, including police officers, social workers, and victim support personnel. The current volume marks the end of the second INTERVICT-based project supported by SASS. It provides a comprehensive update ... of our prior edited volume (Baldry & Winkel, 2008). This new volume includes the keynotes, presented at the SASS-closing conference, that was organized at the end of 2010. Keynotes have been presented by prof. Grant Harris, inspired by N. Zoe Hilton (University of Toronto, Canada), prof. Corine de Ruiter (Maastricht University), prof. Mary Ann Dutton (Georgetown University, Washington D.C., USA), dr. dr. Anna C. Baldry (2nd University of Naples) and prof. Frans Willem Winkel (Tilburg University, INTERVICT). In addition, this volume includes the reviews recently produced by Murray A. Straus and Don G. Dutton. Both authors have an impressive research profile on the domestic violence domain: more importantly, in terms of this volume, they both had a substantial impact on the design of both study 1 and study 2, referred to above. Finally, this volume includes chapters for renowned experts in the field of the psychology of risk assessment (tools). Many of them, including prof. Henrik Belfrage from Mid Sweden University, who has trained the editors in the use of the B-Safer in Rome, and prof. Steve Hart (Simon Fraser University, Canada) have participated in SASS-sponsored conferences, preceding the Closing conference.