Shelley Turner1, Tobias Mackinnon2
1Forensicare, Yarra Bend Road, Fairfield, Vic 3078, 2Forensicare, Yarra Bend Road, Fairfield, Vic 3078
Abstract:
Forensic risk assessment identifies risks of harm to inform treatment planning for transition from secure facilities to the community, and accounts for static and dynamic variables. Management is more effective when targeting dynamic variables that can be changed. Dominant risk assessment tools (e.g. Historical Clinical Risk Management 20 Version 3; Level of Service Inventory – Revised) focus on behaviour change to address dynamic risk and ongoing monitoring and placement to address static and dynamic risk.
Housing can be considered a dynamic risk as it is modifiable. It is crucial to community reintegration and an essential precursor for important protective factors in the community such as education, employment, and meaningful relationships. However, increasingly consumers encounter restrictions when seeking housing, due to a combination of discrimination, fragmented funding and a service landscape that is onerous to navigate. Moreover, Australia, like much of the developed world, is experiencing a ‘housing crisis’, driven by a supply shortage and decreased investment in social housing over recent decades.
Therefore, lack of suitable housing is increasingly considered a criminogenic need or risk factor (e.g. Low, Latimer & Mills, 2023) and, arguably, accommodation risk is increasingly becoming a static risk due to near unobtainability.
Drawing on examples from practice and literature, this presentation will examine the prevalence of housing need among consumers in a secure forensic hospital and the role this plays in determining ‘risk’. It will suggest that the housing crisis is increasing the riskiness of forensic rehabilitation for an entire cohort of forensic consumers and threatening recovery.
Reference:
G Low, C Lindsay Latimer and A Mills, “Stable Housing, ‘Home’ and Desistance: Views from Aotearoa new Zealand” (2023) Criminology & Criminal Justice 1-21, DOI: 10.1177/17488958231210990journals.sagepub.com/home/crj