Visión de la sociedad sobre el sector de seguros

First generation assessments, Bonta (1996) argues, were those grounded in ‘subjective assessment, professional judgement, intuition and gut-level feeling’ (Bonta 1996, p19). The logic behind this kind of approach to assessment is that professionals, through the application of professional training, specialised knowledge and experience, are able to offer a professional explanation relating to the problem under consideration. For example, a practitioner interviews and/or observes an individual offender, perhaps asking a series of questions or employing a checklist developed by professionals to determine any provisions that may be needed. Individual characteristics are considered as a whole, providing practitioners with insight into the individual offender’s lifestyle, attitudes, behaviours, personal history and social skills (Sutton 1994, Litwack, Kirschner and Wack 1993). This type of assessment typically involves a professional judgement6 to be made by a practitioner in order to determine the potential harm a specific individual may pose either to themselves or to others (John Howard Society 2000). Professional practitioner-based assessments in this way are essentially a two- way interpersonal process, where the practitioner is empowered by the authority of decision-making as a faculty to manage the behaviour of offenders through rehabilitative interventions. That is to say, the underlying authority of first generation

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Bonta (1996) classifies ‘professional judgement’ as a first-generation assessment framework (Bonta 1996, p19). Bonta’s reference to first-generation assessments as a ‘professional judgement’ has been replaced with ‘clinical judgement’ in Brown’s (2000, p94) critique of Bonta’s generational model. Other scholars, including Hannah-Moffat (2005, p32) and Hoge (2002, p36) refer to both ‘professional judgement’ and ‘clinical judgement’ within their academic debate. Overall, scholars have failed to document the ambiguity surrounding the use of these terms. Furthermore, it could be suggested that the language of clinical judgement can be deconstructed to be understood as a sterile, impersonal approach to treatment; a practical process unaffected by personal judgement, void of subjectivity or emotion. In that, clinical based approaches involve the examination and re-examination of tests and test-results under which a solution can be found, as opposed to the one-to-one, in-depth informal interview/observational approach to offender care that is advocated within professional judgement based practices. As a result, this thesis will focus on the term ‘professional judgement’; this is partly because the author wishes to maintain the authenticity of Bonta’s works and partly because ‘clinical judgement’ predominately derives from a psychological/medical school of thought, and as a result fails to reflect the specialist knowledge of applied criminology within the practices of the Criminal Justice System.

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risk assessments is primarily represented by the professional-practitioners ability to make discretionary judgements which bridges their specialist knowledge and experience with the needs of an individual offender.

A major weakness of first-generation assessment tools, according to Bonta (1996), lies in the considerable variability of the decision-making process; this is largely a result of the lack of clear and consistent criteria that validates operational systems of governing. This is in part because the questions that are asked as part of the assessment process, which are predominately derived from practitioner experience, are generally considered subjective, inconsistent and unstructured. Other scholars have also critiqued the reliability of professional judgements as a practice for assessing offender behaviour; Wiebush et al (1995, p173) have argued that ‘risk assessment and classification have been informal, highly discretionary procedures carried out by individuals who have varying philosophies and different levels of experience and knowledge, and who use dissimilar criteria in the assessment process’. Similarly, some scholars believe that the subjectivity of first-generation assessments has contributed towards an inconsistent and invalid knowledge base, whilst undermining the legal, ethical and practical application of such tools (Hoge 2002, Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1986). Decisions around individual characteristics of offending, offending behaviour, and treatment needs, are generally based upon vague guidelines and inconsistent information that is derived from subjective interpretation, as opposed to the empirical rigour that characterises more recent actuarially-based risk assessment instruments (Brown 2000). Furthermore, some scholars also believe that first-generation risk assessments become legally, ethically and practically challenged as a result of such subjectivity; and that accountability and defensibility becomes difficult to demonstrate, particularly when a basis for understanding offending is considered as being drawn from a framework of principles and experiences (Andrews and Bonta 1998, Gottfredson and Gottfredson 1986). Still, risk assessment tools, which have relied heavily on the unstructured judgements of skilled practitioners, have been discredited by scholars, practitioners, and researchers as a result of their subjective nature, often described as providing differing and contradictory responses to the level of harm posed by an offender (Hoge 2002, Brown 2000).

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Whilst it has been demonstrated by some scholars (see Hoge 2002, Andrews and Bonta 1998, Brown 2000) that judgement-based risk assessments signify inconsistency and inaccuracy in terms of the prediction of re-offending, scholars on the whole have failed to explore the potentially positive impact of discretionary decision-making and professional-judgements upon the quality of individual assessments, especially in relation to matching offender needs with available resources in a bid to reduce recidivism. As a result of the growing interest in the process and principles that demonstrate cost-effective and efficient risk management and risk control, professionally based judgements have subsequently been abandoned in favour of techniques whose success is measured by decreased recidivism and decreased reconviction rates. Still, an increasing prison population and increased recidivism prompts one to consider the overall effectiveness of risk assessment tools as a mechanism for reducing re-offending and whether a shift from professionally based judgements to actuarial-based assessments has resulted in an over-reliance on what can be considered as only one aspect of offender rehabilitation.

2.5 Second Generation Risk Assessment Models – Static Actuarial Risk