Michael R Davis1
1Consultant Forensic Clinical Psychologist, PO Box 50, Doveton Vic 3177
Abstract
State and Commonwealth Governments in Australia have enacted legislation that permits the post-sentence supervision and detention of terrorism offenders based on their assessed level of risk. However, the psychological study of terrorism remains in its embryonic stages.
This presentation will argue that there is currently no validated way of assessing the risk of recidivism for terrorism offences. This is because the base-rate of recidivism is far too low to enable such assessments to occur without an overwhelming number of false positives. That is, for every recidivist terrorist identified, a concomitantly huge number would need to be detained as false positives.
Despite this mathematical reality, many clinicians have embraced these unvalidated instruments with uncritical zeal to provide risk assessments that have been accepted by the Courts, although there are signs that judges may be becoming more discerning about such evidence. The ethical and professional implications of this practice will also be discussed and some practical suggestions as to what clinicians can validly offer will be proposed.