| 1. |
- Svalin, Klara, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing and managing risk for intimate partner violence : Police employees’ use of the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes in Scania
- 2017
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Ingår i: Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention. - : Taylor & Francis. - 1404-3858 .- 1651-2340. ; 18:1, s. 84-92
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Relapse into intimate partner violence (IPV) can potentially be predicted and counter-measures applied. This study examines the predictive validity of a violence risk assessment tool: the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes (PST-VC) among a sample of 65 offenders. All PST-VC assessments regarding IPV that were conducted at the Scania police department in 2010 were included in the sample. Follow-up time was 16–28 months, and all reported incidents with the same victim and suspected offender were recorded. The PST-VC demonstrated limited effect in the ability to identify high-risk offenders and predict repeat victimization. Interventions against the offender and victim protective actions were more often recommended in high-risk cases but did not lower the number of IPV relapses. The study suggests that the PST-VC is not a promising instrument.
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| 2. |
- Svalin, Klara, et al.
(författare)
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Inter-Rater Reliability of the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crime (PST-VC)
- 2015
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Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Background: Risk assessments are used by the police in order to identify the need for victim protection. In Sweden, two kinds of methods are used in police settings – variants of instruments developed in the HCR-20 tradition, and an instrument designed within one regional police authority: the Police screening Tool for Violent Crime (PST-VC). Aim: To study the reliability and validity of the PST-VC as a general tool for assessing and managing threat and violence in police settings. Method: Seventeen cases were evaluated by ten police employees. Each case was evaluated by two assessors randomly paired and blind to each other´s assessments. All cases were also assessed previously at the time of the police report, together 51 pairs of assessments. Results: The inter-rater agreement was examined for five variables: the suspected offenders’ access to weapons, previous offences, previous violence/threat against the victim, the global risk assessments and the recommended protective actions. Inter-rater agreement was highest for the global assessments and the recommended protective actions. However, agreeing about these global ratings was associated with widely varying scores for the structured variables among the raters. The fairly high reliability was most likely due to similar “gut feelings” induced by the police culture.
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| 3. |
- Svalin, Klara, et al.
(författare)
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Police employees' violence risk assessments : the predictive validity of the B-SAFER and the significance of protective actions
- 2018
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Ingår i: International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. - : Elsevier. - 0160-2527 .- 1873-6386. ; 56, s. 71-79
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Violence risk assessment and management is conducted in police settings in order to prevent repeat victimization. One of the most frequently used violence risk assessment tools in this specific context is called the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (B-SAFER), which focuses on intimate partner violence (IPV). The present study examines B-SAFER assessments conducted by police employees, related protective actions and repeat IPV crimes in order to study: 1) to what extent risk- and victim vulnerability factors in the B-SAFER predicted global risk assessments, 2) the predictive accuracy of each B-SAFER item and the global risk assessments with regard to repeat IPV, 3) to what extent recommended protective actions were implemented and 4) the preventive effect of the implemented protective actions on repeat IPV. There were a large number of missing cases in the assessments and the risk and victim vulnerability factors only contributed to the global risk assessments to a minor extent. The predictive validity was low overall, few protective actions were implemented and those which were actually implemented did not appear to prevent repeat IPV. The continuous education and training of assessors is required to improve the work of violence risk assessment and management in police settings.
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| 4. |
- Svalin, Klara
(författare)
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Risk assessment of intimate partner violence in a police setting : reliability and predictive accuracy
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish Police Authority conducts violence risk assessments in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) using specific assessment tools. Such assessments are conducted in order to identify high-risk offenders and thereafter implement suitable interventions to prevent repeat IPV. In this thesis, two different risk assessment tools have been evaluated: The Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes (PST-VC) and the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (B-SAFER, Kropp, Hart, & Belfrage, 2005; 2010). The overall aim has been to contribute to improving the knowledge on police employees’ violence risk assessment and management, specifically with regard to the predictive validity and inter-rater reliability of such assessments. In the first study, we evaluated whether the PST-VC can be used by police employees to identify high-risk cases of repeat IPV. In addition, the preventive effects of the recommended crime preventive and victim protective actions were discussed and also whether these create a confounding problem with respect to predictive validity. The results showed that the predictive accuracy of the tool was fairly weak. Further, the assessors recommended a higher level of interventions in high-risk cases, but these did not reduce the rate of repeat IPV. Study II aimed to examine the inter-rater reliability of the PST-VC and the BSAFER. Police employees conducted pairwise assessments of IPV cases using one of these tools. The tools were evaluated separately and the cases used for the assessments were different for each tool. This means that the consistency of the assessments could not be compared head-to-head across the tools. The results were nonetheless rather similar for both tools; the inter-rater reliability for the individual items was low for most of the individual factors, but was relatively high for the global risk assessments. A suggested explanation for this was that the assessors may have used their tacit knowledge, rather than the individual items, in their global risk assessments and that they shared this tacit knowledge, at least to some extent. The third study focused on the B-SAFER tool, and on the predictive accuracy of the individual items and the global risk assessments in relation to repeat IPV. The study also aimed to examine to what extent the recommended crime preventive and victim protective actions were implemented and whether these interventions had a preventive effect on repeat IPV. The predictive accuracy of the individual B-SAFER items and the global risk assessments was low overall. The majority of the recommended interventions were not implemented, and they did not prevent repeat IPV. The final study (IV) took the form of a systematic literature study with the aimof evaluating the predictive accuracy of IPV risk assessments conducted bypractitioners in different settings, with IPV recidivism as the outcome measure.The number of studies that fulfilled the inclusion criteria was small (N= 11).One of these studies was conducted in a treatment setting, while all the otherswere conducted in criminal justice settings. The predictive accuracy for theglobal risk assessments ranged from low to medium, and the role of treatmentor other interventions to prevent repeat IPV had been analyzed in one way orthe other in eight of the studies. However, there was no consistency withregard to the importance of the interventions for repeat IPV.In summary, the predictive accuracy of the police employees’ IPV riskassessments was rather low, and the same applied to the inter-rater reliabilityfor most of the individual items included in the tools. The level of consistencywas higher, however, for the global risk assessments. The IPV preventiveinterventions were not effective in preventing repeat IPV. The predictivevalidity of IPV risk assessments conducted in other settings was found to besimilar, but results regarding the potential mediating role of interventions weremixed.
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| 5. |
- Svalin, Klara, et al.
(författare)
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The Inter-Rater Reliability of Violence Risk Assessment Tools Used by Police Employees in Swedish Police Settings
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nordisk Politiforskning. - : Universitetsforlaget. - 1894-8693. ; 4:1, s. 9-28
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Risk assessments are used by the police in order to identify the need for victim protection. The aim of this study was to examine the inter-rater reliability of two violence risk assessment tools; the Police Screening Tool for Violent Crimes (PST-VC) and the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (B-SAFER), used by police employees in two different police authorities in Sweden. The inter-rater agreement was evaluated for both tools, with respect to global risk assessments, recommended protective actions and risk- and victim vulnerability factors. The main results showed that the inter-rater agreement was highest for the global assessments and widely varying, from very low to fairly high, for the structured variables. The fairly high reliability for the global risk assessments was most likely due to shared assumptions (heuristics, tacit knowledge) among the assessors rather than being based on the information obtained by the tools.
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