The Clinical Prediction of Dangerousness: The Logic of the Process

See: Diamond, B. "The Psychiatric Prediction of Dangerousness ," U. Pa. L. Rev., 123, 439-52 (1974)

; Kvast, S. "Can Psychiatrists Foretell Criminal Behavior?" Int. J. Offen. Ther. Comp. Criminol. 20, 148-52 (1976)

; Rubin , Prediction of Dangerousness in Mentally I11 Criminals, Arch. gen. Psychiat., 27, 397 (1972)

; Russell, D.H. "Diagnozing Offender Patients", Int. J. Offend. Ther. Comp. Criminol. 13, 147-57 (1969)

; Schmideberg, M. "Some Basic Principles of Offender Therapy: II, Int. J. Offend. Ther. Comp. Criminol. 19, 22-32 (1975).

Kvast, S. supra note 1 at 150, 152.

Glasser, D. (1964) The Eflectiveness of a Prison and Parole System, New York: Bobbs-Merrill .

Panzetta, A. "Toward a Scientific Psychiatric Nosology Conceptual and Pragmatic Issues". Arch. gen. Psychiat., 30, 154-61 (1974).

Sarbin, T. "The Dangerous Individual: An Outcome of Social Identity Transformations ", Br. J. Criminol., 7, 285 (1967).

Panzetta, A. supra note 4 at 157. Panzetta is discussing the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM II).

M.S. "When the Psyciatric Interview is a Farce," Int. J. Offend. Ther. Comp. Criminol. 17, 211-13 (1973).

Clinicians would be better able to predict the person's tendencies of how a situation is subjectively experienced. However, prediction becomes much more tenuous when the next step of how the person will behave is considered.

Up to this point, we have merely logically set out the categories and rules which enter into the process of relating diagnosis to prediction. The question of goodness of prediction is another matter. This would take us into the realm of outcome evaluation, and we would become heavily involved in questions and problems of criteria, sound experimental design, and other methodological questions. Although ideally this interesting area should not be divorced from other aspects of prediction, for practical reasons it will not be emphasized in this paper. The evaluation problems of any given prediction scheme are complex enough to justify separate treatment, and the authors are preparing a separate manuscript on that issue. In the present work the question of goodness of prediction is treated informally and only to the extent that it bears directly the central considerations.

Glasser, D. supra note 3 at Chapter 13.

Holt, R. "Clinical and Statistical Prediction." Abnorm. soc. Psychol., 56, 1-12 (1958).

Id. at 2.

Id. at 10.