Garrido, Sodini, Paul, and Damas - What Was the Risk?
In the late 1980's, 47 year old Phillip Arnold Paul killed an elderly woman.
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Consequently, he was committed to Washington State's mental health facility in 1987.
Recently, he and other criminally not responsible patients, were taken on an outing from Eastern State Hospital to a State fair, from which Paul escaped.
He was taken on the outing in spite of concerns about his dangerousness and the fact that he left the hospital with a backpack filled with clothes and supplies.
He has now been returned to the hospital.
If he had had an assessment of dangerousness, his level of security could have been accurately determined and his trip into the community would likely have been prevented.
In 2009, George Sodini kept an online diary of his hatred of women and was questioned by the police for taking a hand grenade on a bus days before he shot and killed 3 women in a Pennsylvania gym.
The police did not have enough evidence to hold him on the grenade incident, so they released him.
But was this a sign that more violence was yet to come? At least 16 visits to the Garrido home by the parole office, the fire department, and one by the sheriff's office did not discover Jaycee Lee Duggard, who had been (allegedly) raped and held captive by Mr.
and Mrs.
Garrido for 18 years.
Lots of questions remain, but this appeared to be a truly a dangerous man with insufficient security and safeguards to be in the community.
Had he been accurately assessed for dangerousness, other measures to provide treatment or security measures could have been taken.
Mesac Damas had a history of domestic violence dating back to 2000.
He was arrested for domestic battery again in January of 2009.
He was placed on 12 months probation and ordered to take a battery intervention course.
It is likely that someone with a10 year history of domestic violence has a deep seated problem that will not be resolved with a course in domestic violence.
A more intensive intervention was likely to be needed.
Only a complete assessment of the risk for future violence and treatment needs can determine what security measures were needed in this case to protect the family.
Everyone in his family now lies dead and he will Mr.
Damas will be questioned in their murders.
Only time will tell if more should have been done to prevent this tragedy.
These are examples of the need for Departments of Corrections, inpatient mental health facilities, departments of parole and probation, and parole boards to use and abide by valid and reliable assessments of dangerousness in making decisions about level of security, community contacts, levels of structure, treatment needs, safety procedures, and parole and probation decisions.
Persons, such as Phillip Paul, Damas, and Garrido who have committed violent or sexually offending acts and are under supervision have differing risks that they will commit such acts in the future.
Determining the level of risk for each person involved with the legal system, allows the government to put the strictest restrictions on the most dangerous patients, parolees, and probationers and less restrictions on those less likely to re-offend.
This allows the system to target limited resources, while more efficiently and effectively protecting public safety.
To not do so, makes it easier for the most dangerous offenders to re-offend.
Will this stop all violent re-offending? Certainly not.
But, maybe it can reduce some of the more extreme cases.
We have the technology; We should use it in all violent offender cases.
The following explains how this can be done.
Forensic examinations including valid and reliable risk assessment tools can be used in many instances, but are not routinely used and adhered to in every facility and department.
What we know is that clinical judgment alone of the risk of future dangerousness is little better than chance.
So, without using valid risk assessment tools, those making decisions to let dangerous inmates, probationers, parolees, or patients into the community with lesser levels of security will be wrong about 45-48% of the time if they rely on clinical judgment alone to make these decisions.
When instruments that improve the accuracy of this decision making process are available, not using them, is less than best practice.
There have been three generations of the development of dangerousness risk assessment tools.
For adults only three have high rates of validity when examined in terms of actual violence committed.
Only two have had extensive research.
These are the HCR-20 (Webster, Douglas, Eaves, and Hart, 1997) and the VRAG (Quinsey, Harris, Rice, and Cormier, 1998).
The RME (Seifert, unpublished manuscript) is a promising tool which includes a risk management section, as well.
The PCL-R (Hare, 1991, 2002) is a measure of male psychopathy which can be associated with dangerousness among men.
The LSI-R (Andrews and Bonta, 1995) is a measure of general recidivism which is associated with violence in some cases.
All of these instruments are better than clinical judgment at determining the level of precautions needed when making decisions about security needed when placing public safety at risk.
While Correctional facilities are moving quickly to incorporate these instruments into their assessment processes, mental health facilities, child protection agencies, and probation and parole agencies must move just as quickly to integrate similar forensic assessments.
The key to such assessments is determining the reliability and validity of evaluations for dangerousness and their application to the population in question.
Assessments traditionally used to evaluated mental illness are insufficient in cases where dangerousness is an element of the equation.
Therefore, the assessments listed above are more appropriate as risk assessments than clinical interview or instruments such as the MMPI-2, MCMI-III, and Rorschach.
Checklists that have not been tested for reliability and validity are not sufficient either.
Further research on existing tools will continue to improve this important area of science.
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Consequently, he was committed to Washington State's mental health facility in 1987.
Recently, he and other criminally not responsible patients, were taken on an outing from Eastern State Hospital to a State fair, from which Paul escaped.
He was taken on the outing in spite of concerns about his dangerousness and the fact that he left the hospital with a backpack filled with clothes and supplies.
He has now been returned to the hospital.
If he had had an assessment of dangerousness, his level of security could have been accurately determined and his trip into the community would likely have been prevented.
In 2009, George Sodini kept an online diary of his hatred of women and was questioned by the police for taking a hand grenade on a bus days before he shot and killed 3 women in a Pennsylvania gym.
The police did not have enough evidence to hold him on the grenade incident, so they released him.
But was this a sign that more violence was yet to come? At least 16 visits to the Garrido home by the parole office, the fire department, and one by the sheriff's office did not discover Jaycee Lee Duggard, who had been (allegedly) raped and held captive by Mr.
and Mrs.
Garrido for 18 years.
Lots of questions remain, but this appeared to be a truly a dangerous man with insufficient security and safeguards to be in the community.
Had he been accurately assessed for dangerousness, other measures to provide treatment or security measures could have been taken.
Mesac Damas had a history of domestic violence dating back to 2000.
He was arrested for domestic battery again in January of 2009.
He was placed on 12 months probation and ordered to take a battery intervention course.
It is likely that someone with a10 year history of domestic violence has a deep seated problem that will not be resolved with a course in domestic violence.
A more intensive intervention was likely to be needed.
Only a complete assessment of the risk for future violence and treatment needs can determine what security measures were needed in this case to protect the family.
Everyone in his family now lies dead and he will Mr.
Damas will be questioned in their murders.
Only time will tell if more should have been done to prevent this tragedy.
These are examples of the need for Departments of Corrections, inpatient mental health facilities, departments of parole and probation, and parole boards to use and abide by valid and reliable assessments of dangerousness in making decisions about level of security, community contacts, levels of structure, treatment needs, safety procedures, and parole and probation decisions.
Persons, such as Phillip Paul, Damas, and Garrido who have committed violent or sexually offending acts and are under supervision have differing risks that they will commit such acts in the future.
Determining the level of risk for each person involved with the legal system, allows the government to put the strictest restrictions on the most dangerous patients, parolees, and probationers and less restrictions on those less likely to re-offend.
This allows the system to target limited resources, while more efficiently and effectively protecting public safety.
To not do so, makes it easier for the most dangerous offenders to re-offend.
Will this stop all violent re-offending? Certainly not.
But, maybe it can reduce some of the more extreme cases.
We have the technology; We should use it in all violent offender cases.
The following explains how this can be done.
Forensic examinations including valid and reliable risk assessment tools can be used in many instances, but are not routinely used and adhered to in every facility and department.
What we know is that clinical judgment alone of the risk of future dangerousness is little better than chance.
So, without using valid risk assessment tools, those making decisions to let dangerous inmates, probationers, parolees, or patients into the community with lesser levels of security will be wrong about 45-48% of the time if they rely on clinical judgment alone to make these decisions.
When instruments that improve the accuracy of this decision making process are available, not using them, is less than best practice.
There have been three generations of the development of dangerousness risk assessment tools.
For adults only three have high rates of validity when examined in terms of actual violence committed.
Only two have had extensive research.
These are the HCR-20 (Webster, Douglas, Eaves, and Hart, 1997) and the VRAG (Quinsey, Harris, Rice, and Cormier, 1998).
The RME (Seifert, unpublished manuscript) is a promising tool which includes a risk management section, as well.
The PCL-R (Hare, 1991, 2002) is a measure of male psychopathy which can be associated with dangerousness among men.
The LSI-R (Andrews and Bonta, 1995) is a measure of general recidivism which is associated with violence in some cases.
All of these instruments are better than clinical judgment at determining the level of precautions needed when making decisions about security needed when placing public safety at risk.
While Correctional facilities are moving quickly to incorporate these instruments into their assessment processes, mental health facilities, child protection agencies, and probation and parole agencies must move just as quickly to integrate similar forensic assessments.
The key to such assessments is determining the reliability and validity of evaluations for dangerousness and their application to the population in question.
Assessments traditionally used to evaluated mental illness are insufficient in cases where dangerousness is an element of the equation.
Therefore, the assessments listed above are more appropriate as risk assessments than clinical interview or instruments such as the MMPI-2, MCMI-III, and Rorschach.
Checklists that have not been tested for reliability and validity are not sufficient either.
Further research on existing tools will continue to improve this important area of science.
Source...