Editorial
| Date | 08 May 2017 |
| Pages | 89-90 |
| Published date | 08 May 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JFP-09-2016-0046 |
| Author | Carol Ireland,Neil Gredecki |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care,Criminology & forensic psychology,Forensic practice,Sociology,Sociology of crime & law,Law enforcement/correctional,Public policy & environmental management,Policing,Criminal justice |
Carol Ireland and Neil Gredecki
Welcome to Issue 19(2). We are very pleased to begin this issue with two invited papers.
The first is by Geoff Dean and Graeme Pettet. This is a timely conceptual piece looking
at structured professional judgement approaches to terrorist/extremist risk
assessment, exploring how best to deal with subjectivity. The paper carefully
considers both the conceptual and methodological issues with this approach, and
how best it can be utilised with terrorism risk considerations. They skilfully present how
a quantified tool can be utilised at both operational and national level. Following a similar
theme of aggression is the invited paper by Verstegen and colleagues. This is another
excellent paper, looking carefully at inpatient violence in a Dutch forensic psychiatric
hospital. Here the authors focus, amongst others, on the traumatic experiences for
victims and witnesses. They successfully provide more insight into patterns of violent
behaviour, allowing greater consideration of preventive measures. They utilise a
sizeable sample, and as such are able to draw some significant conclusions. Ultimately,
they illustrate a range of important differences between groups of forensic inpatients in
frequency and type of inpatient violent behaviour, and which offers great applicability to
those practitioners working in the field.
In keeping with the focus on aggression, the paper is then followed by Sher and colleagues,
presenting an excellent validation study on the START:AV. They explore the validity and
reliability of the START:AV, looking at an adolescent sample. They succinctly argue the
relevance of this tool when working with adolescents in hospital settings, further reinforced by
their findings of significant relationships between strength and vulnerability scores. They
introduce very well the notion and importance of protective factors, and when looking at risk
issues; as such they make a valued addition to this important field. Continuing with aggression
risk assessment, and progressing to examining adults, Geoffrey Dickens and Laura O’Shea
then explore the use of the HCR-20 from the views of clinicians working in a mental health
setting. Using a cross-sectional design, they observe that historical and clinical items were felt
to be most relevant to clinicians, with a recent history of violence being regarded as more
relevant for risk formulation. They note that, overall, it is recent violence that appears to be
regarded as the most important, followed by clinical items. The authors argue well that there is
a risk some clinicians can over-value historical items, and that the importance of recent
violence is worthy of further consideration.
Moving towards the impact on staff is a paper by Chandler and colleagues. Here they explore
burnout in clinicians, and when working with forensic clients in the community who have
personality disorder. They note that levels of burnout are higher in those who work with a forensic
community sample, compared to non-forensic. They summarise effectively strategies for
managing clinician burnout, including developing resilience, using humour, team coherence, use
of breaks and developing personal strategies for releasing stress. As such, it is a timely piece that
offers strategies of support to the clinician working in this challenging field. A thought-provoking
paper follows by Jamie Walton and Simon Duff, and where they have conducted a small-scale
study examining the experiences of five individuals who were assessed as having a sexual
preference for children. They examine thematically the experiences of this group and note
three recurring themes: “internal battle”,“I’m always going to have these thoughts”and
“there’s no help out there”. An overall identification was that the participants felt their sexual
preference was relatively enduring, and as such, this paper argues for a creative approach to
manage such individuals.
DOI 10.1108/JFP-09-2016-0046 VOL. 19 NO. 2 2017, pp. 89-90, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2050-8794
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Editorial
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