Violence Risk – Assessment and Management: Advances Through Structured Professional Judgement and Sequential Redirections

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, this volume offers comprehensive guidance and background material on decision–making in cases where future violence is a potential issue. It outlines best practice in conducting violence assessments of individuals in varied contexts, including civil psychiatric hospitals, forensic mental health services and the criminal justice system. The authors detail the operation of criminal and mental health codes internationally, with a particular focus on Canada and England, and synthesize commonly agreed principles appropriate for use in assessing a client’s propensity for committing violence.  This new edition reflects a general change in violence risk assessment and management, with structured professional judgement now a well established approach, and engages with the growing attention paid to the role of protective factors when evaluating and managing violence risks. It demonstrates today’s closer integration of risk assessment and treatment, covered in discrete chapters on planning and formulation.

Christopher D. Webster is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Canada, as well as Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Simon Fraser University. A Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the American Psychological Association and the Royal Society of Canada, his publications include the first edition of this volume (Wiley–Blackwell, 2007), and Essential Writings in Risk Assessment and Management (2007), which he co–edited.  Quazi Haque is Executive Medical Director for Partnerships in Care, one of the largest providers of mental health services in the UK. A Fellow of the UK Royal College of Psychiatrists and former lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry’s Home Office Teaching Unit, he collaborated with Christopher Webster in developing a structured professional judgement training programme at the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London.  Stephen J. Hucker is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, Canada. A specialist in forensic psychiatry, he is a former head of the forensic programs at Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry and has lectured widely on forensic psychiatry both to scientific and professional audiences. He maintains a private practice and is frequently called as an expert witness in legal cases.