ABSTRACT Ideally, evidence-based patient outcomes would be collected on a 6-monthly basis, allowing accurate measurement of treatment progress. This would encourage research and subsequent development of forensic mental health services. Lack of standardised routine outcome collection within Scotland may be acting as a barrier to this. The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends that evidence-based clinical and patient-reported data should be collected; however, no specific measures are recommended. COnsensus-based Standards for health Measurement INstruments (COSMIN) guidelines for systematic reviews of outcome measures were followed and their Risk of Bias tool used to evaluate the quality of studies. Instrument content validity, for the purposes of measuring forensic patient recovery, was analysed separately through review of articles relating to instrument development and user feedback. From four evaluative instruments selected by predefined criteria, only Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for violence risk (SAPROF) and Instrument for Forensic Treatment Evaluation (IFTE) possessed the core psychometric properties of a useful outcome measure. These two instruments can therefore be recommended for the purpose of monitoring forensic patient recovery, with SAPROF being the more feasible option. HCR-20 and HoNOS-secure were found to lack content validity for this purpose. Additional psychometric studies for SAPROF are recommended.