Stable-2007 and indeterminate detention

Andrew J R Harris

doi:10.5964/sotrap.4587

Abstract

Public safety is the primary reason to assess future risk in men with a history of sexual offending. Over the last twenty-five years our knowledge of, and ability to assess, dynamic risk factors in men with a history of sexual offending has meaningfully improved, but understanding, adoption, utilization, and reasonable implementation of the fruits of this new knowledge is not universal. This article presents a brief overview of the development of dynamic risk assessment for men with a history of sexual offending, primarily following the work of R. Karl Hanson and his associates. This is followed by a review of a meta-analysis on the reliability and validity of STABLE-2007 and two other independent studies that provide useful ancillary information. Utilizing STABLE-2007 with men faced with, or under sanction of indeterminate detention is the focus of this paper and we will review how mental health diagnoses affect recidivism assessment, some concerns about implicit assessment biases, how to employ stable dynamic assessment in secure facilities, address treatment implications resulting from dynamic assessment, and present ideas for future research. I will close by presenting nine (9) arguments why using STABLE-2007 is recommended practice with indeterminate detention populations.

Highlights

Public safety is the primary reason to assess future risk in men with a history of sexual offending
Utilizing STABLE-2007 with men faced with, or under sanction of indeterminate detention is the focus of this paper and we will review how mental health diagnoses affect recidivism assessment, some concerns about implicit assessment biases, how to employ stable dynamic assessment in secure facilities, address treatment implications resulting from dynamic assessment, and present ideas for future research
Over the last 20 years the monitoring of reliable risk factors such as those mentioned above has been adopted by people supervising men with a history of sexual offending who have been released to the community

Summary

A Developmental Progression

During the 1980s and 1990s several research teams focused on developing practical and valid actuarial risk assessment instruments focusing primarily on static variables. To develop the officer interviews and the file coding manual, several theoretical and research results were considered: the works of Bandura (1977; social cog nitive), Laws (1989; relapse prevention) and studies demonstrating differences between sexual recidivists and non-recidivists (Hanson et al, 1994; attitudes tolerant of sexual assault; Seidman et al, 1994; intimacy deficits) Using these data, Hanson and Harris created the first dynamic risk need assessment rating that included both stable and acute items for men with a history of sexual offending. Etzler et al (2020) added to their 2012 data set to study the predictive and incremental validity of STABLE-2007 beyond Static-99 with a sample of N = 638 adult males who had been convicted of a sexual offence and followed for an average of 8.2 years This dataset was included in the Brankley et al (2021) meta-analysis. These authours concluded Static-STABLE nominal categories “could be regarded as adequately calibrated” (p. 12); and that the findings support “the clinical utility of the application of STABLE-2007 nominal risk categories for predicting sexual reoffences” (p. 13)

A Network Analysis

Findings

Conclusions