Forensic Experts’ Perspectives on Australian Indigenous Sexual Offenders and Factors Important in Evaluating the Risk of Recidivism

• Published date: 01 November 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20967941
• Date: 01 November 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X20967941

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

2021, Vol. 65(15) 1653 –1675

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X20967941

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Article

Forensic Experts’

Perspectives on Australian

Indigenous Sexual Offenders

and Factors Important

in Evaluating the Risk

of Recidivism

Alfred Allan1, Cate L. Parry1, Hilde Tubex2,

Caroline Spiranovic2,3, and Frank Morgan2,3

Abstract

Law and ethics require that risk assessment should be cross-culturally valid and

fair, but Australian research in this regard is underdeveloped. A logical first step in

progressing the work required to build a strong evidence base on culturally sensitive

risk assessment in Australia is to determine the expert views of those in the field.

We interviewed 13 Australian evaluators who assess Indigenous sexual offenders’

recidivism risk to determine their perceptions of the risk assessment instruments

they use and the attributes they believe evaluators doing cross-cultural assessments

should have. Our central findings are that evaluators use the available instruments

because they believe that the same factors predict sexual recidivism for Indigenous

and non-Indigenous offenders, but that they do so cautiously knowing the limitations

of the instruments. Evaluators nevertheless want more research data to guide them

when they use the available instruments to assess people from cultures that differ

from those of people in the normative sample. Participants acknowledge that the

unique challenges of assessing Indigenous sexual offenders require non-Indigenous

evaluators to be culturally competent and confident. These findings should be valuable

to evaluators and those who train or supervise evaluators and/or intend to establish

or improve the validity of risk instruments in Australia.

1Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, Australia

2University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

3University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Alfred Allan, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA, 6027, Australia.

Email: a.allan@ecu.edu.au

967941IJOXXX10.1177/0306624X20967941International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative CriminologyAllan et al.

research-article2020

1654 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 65(15)

Keywords

ancestry, culture, Indigenous, recidivism, risk assessment, sexual offenders

Decision-makers in the justice system routinely make sentencing, intervention and

discharge decisions in respect of sexual offenders (Allan et al., 2006). These decisions

impact on offenders’ interests and legal rights and, indirectly, the interests of members

of the community, especially those in the communities where the relevant offences

took place (Allan et al., 2018). Decision-makers must in all these cases consider the

likelihood that offenders will reoffend, and they frequently rely on mental health eval-

uators’ assessments of offenders’ risk of reoffending. Evaluators and the methods they

use are therefore pivotal to the justice system’s ability to manage sexual offenders, but

they are controversial (e.g., Keyzer & McSherry, 2015), especially when they use non-

validated instruments and evaluate people whose culture differs from their own

(Shepherd & Anthony, 2018).

Allan et al. (2018) found that Australian evaluators who assess sexual offenders

from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island or Indigenous communities use a range of

available assessment instruments. The development of these risk assessment instru-

ments can be traced back to the finding in Baxstrom v Herold (1966) that clinical

judgments of the risk of reoffending were not better than chance (Hunt & Wiley, 1968;

Steadman, 1973, 1980). Researchers working mostly in North America responded to

this finding by identifying variables that predicted reoffending such as Andrews and

Bonta’s (1994) eight central risk factors (i.e., criminal history, pro-criminal attitudes,

pro-criminal associates, antisocial personality pattern, employment and education

deficits, family and marital issues, substance abuse, and leisure and recreation defi-

cits). They further developed atheoretical actuarial risk assessment instruments using

mostly historical variables that do not allow evaluators to consider dynamic predictors

of recidivism (Bonta & Andrews, 2017). To allow evaluators to use their professional

judgments in a systematic way and consider dynamic risk factors researchers later

developed structured professional judgment assessment instruments with a theoretical

and actuarial basis (Bonta & Andrews, 2017). Researchers expanded these structured

professional judgment instruments to allow evaluators to consider how offenders who

are found to be at a high risk of reoffending could be managed from intake until the

end of their involvement with the criminal justice system (Andrews et al., 2006).

Modern evaluators have a variety of instruments to choose from (see Kelley

et al., 2020; Neal & Grisso, 2014) and Allan et al. (2018) identified 11 instruments

Australian evaluators use, including actuarial (e.g., the STATIC-99; Hanson &

Thornton, 1999) and structured professional judgment assessment (e.g., The Risk

for Sexual Violence Protocol [(RSVP]; Hart et al., 2003) instruments. Researchers

nevertheless consistently find that ancestry (i.e., line of descent) and/or culture

influence the predictive accuracy of these instruments (e.g., Allan et al., 2006;

Babchishin et al., 2012; Gutierrez et al., 2013, 2016; Långström, 2004; Lee et al.,

2020; McCuish et al., 2018; Perley-Robertson et al., 2018; Smallbone & Rallings,