Preliminary findings on reliability and validity of the Historical-Clinical-Risk assessment in a forensic psychiatric setting

The purpose of this study was to establish inter-rater reliability and retrospective Validity of the Historical-Clinical-Risk assessment (HCR-20). HCR-20 is an instrument for assessing risk, incorporating three different approaches to the area. Six patients sentenced to Forensic psychiatric care for violent crimes were individually rated on the HCR-20 by 6 raters, trained in the assessment manual. The correlation's between raters were in the range of 0.76 to 0.96 for the full scale. The range for the Clinical evaluation was found to be somewhat weaker (0.52-0.95). Overall the results indicates that the HCR-20 has a satisfactory level of reliability provided that raters are properly trained. The HCR-20 was also compared to independent ratings of past violent crimes. The independent ratings were done by two professionals using the criminal records of the clients. These were rated in a 6 point crime-index scale, considering criminal versatility and seriousness of violent crimes. The correlate of the crime-index Scale and "HCR-19" was 0.67. The results were discussed with respect to the usefulness of HCR-20 as a risk assessment instrument with good levels of reliability and validity.