Kevin S. Douglas

• Simon Fraser University

Mandatory reporting of intimate partner violence (MR-IPV) is a controversial topic. This study examined the practice of MR-IPV by investigating what factors were associated with MR-IPV experience among victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). The study also investigated the experiences of IPV victims who have experienced MR-IPV, to better unders...

We present a multiple case study analysis and an examination of methods for reassessing risk for violence across three timepoints. Using archival data, risk for violence was assessed among two adolescents charged with a violent offense using the Violence Risk Scale–Youth Version and Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability: Adolescent Version...

Mandatory reporting (MR) among service providers (SP) working with intimate partner violence (IPV) is controversial, and the research is scarce. The potential association of SPs experience with IPV and MR-IPV and their attitudes is the aim of the current study. A total of 374 SPs working with victims and perpetrators (help-seekers) of IPV participa...

Purpose Whether professionals consider children to be an important factor regarding mandatory reporting of intimate partner violence (MR-IPV) remains unknown. In the present study, we examined to what extent the presence of children had an impact on service providers’ decision making when faced with IPV, and the parents’ reported consequences of MR...

Explicit threats of violence are relatively common and can evoke stress and fear in their recipients. Although explicit threats are rarely enacted, a portion are a genuine precursor to violent behavior, and little guidance exists on how to evaluate threats effectively. The previous research has preliminarily identified characteristics of threats an...

Section III of the fifth iteration of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes an alternative model of personality disorder diagnosis that conceptualizes antisocial personality disorder as an interpersonal, rather than behavioral, construct. However, the diagnostic specifier for psychopathy has been met with recent...

Objectives Compulsory mental health care includes compulsory hospitalisation and outpatient commitment with medication treatment without consent. Uncertain evidence of the effects of compulsory care contributes to large geographical variations and a controversy on its use. Some argue that compulsion can rarely be justified and should be reduced to...

In our article, "How much does that cost? Examining the economic costs of crime in North America attributable to people with psychopathic personality disorder" (Gatner et al., 2023, pp. 391-400), we estimated that psychopathic personality disorder (PPD) was associated with substantial crime costs, using a top-down approach of national costs in the...

The current prospective risk assessment study evaluated the application of the Chinese translation of the Historical‐Clinical‐Risk Management‐20 Version 3 (HCR‐20V3) in a sample of 152 offenders with mental disorders and civil psychiatric patients. The ratings of the presence and relevance of risk factors were compared, as well as summary risk rati...

The field of psychology–law is extremely broad, encompassing a strikingly large range of topic areas in both applied psychology and experimental psychology. Despite the continued and rapid growth of the field, there is no current and comprehensive resource that provides coverage of the major topic areas in the psychology–law field. The Oxford Handb...

Given substantial national crime costs and that psychopathic personality disorder (PPD) is a robust predictor of recidivism, a research gap exists concerning the cost of crime attributable to adults with PPD. The current study employed a bottom-up cost of illness approach to estimate the association between PPD and crime costs among Canadian men in...

The Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality–Lexical Rating Scale (CAPP-LRS) is a self-report instrument designed to index psychopathy according to the CAPP psychopathy framework. Developed with the expressed goal of advancing the state of knowledge regarding the specific features of psychopathy, the CAPP model and associated instrument...

Assessing violence risk amongst forensic patients is a vital legal and clinical task. The field of violence risk assessment has developed considerably over the past two decades but remains primarily risk focused. Despite this, growing attention to and work on protective factors or strengths has occurred. In this prospective naturalistic study with...

There has been tremendous growth in the past two decades in terms of the scientific and conceptual understanding of risk assessment for criminality and violence. Indeed, the field now benefits from hundreds of empirical research studies that have investigated different approaches to risk assessment. This article reviews two contemporary approaches...

This study assessed whether indicators of humanistic optimal functioning were predictive of lower levels of violence among youth across a 6-month period. Youth ( N = 346) aged 12 to 14 years completed measures of authenticity and of positive regard for others (generalized trust, forgiveness, and gratitude). Approximately 6 months later, the youth r...

There are concerns that risk assessment instruments may exacerbate racial/ethnic disparities in the justice system. Risk factors measured by Western-normed tools may not accurately reflect the life experiences of non-White offenders. Systemic biases may also be baked into tools if certain risk items are unfairly associated with race/class. Despite...

Cost of illness research has established that mental disorders lead to significant social burden and massive financial costs. A significant gap exists for the economic burden of many personality disorders, including psychopathic personality disorder (PPD). In the current study, we used a top-down prevalence-based cost of illness approach to estimat...

Objective: Despite advances in developing structured risk assessment instruments, there is currently no instrument to assess and manage the risk of intimate partner violence perpetration among adolescents. Given the empirical link between many forms of antisocial behavior, we tested whether structured tools commonly used by professionals to evaluat...

Despite the proliferation of risk assessment instruments in professional practice, there is no risk assessment tool to evaluate the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV) among adolescents. Thus, in this dissertation, the utility of four widely used risk assessment tools, the SAVRY, YLS/CMI, PCL:YV, and SARA-V3, for evaluating adolescent IPV risk...

The Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) is a lexically based conceptual model of psychopathy. Despite widespread use in research settings, the Lexical Rating Scale for the CAPP (CAPP-LRS) requires an advanced reading level for completion. The present study is the first to evaluate the content validity of the CAPP-Basic, a le...

Reports an error in "Examining the incremental and interactive effects of boldness with meanness and disinhibition within the triarchic model of psychopathy" by Dylan T. Gatner, Kevin S. Douglas and Stephen D. Hart (Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 2016[Jul], Vol 7[3], 259-268). In the original article, there were several err...

The Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality–Lexical Rating Scale (CAPP-LRS) is a self-report instrument designed to index psychopathy according to the CAPP psychopathy framework. Developed with the expressed goal of advancing the state of knowledge regarding the specific features of psychopathy, the CAPP model and associated instrument...

Objective: Limited research has examined the association between different dimensions of psychopathy and membership in trajectories of physical intimate partner violence (IPV) while also considering developmental precursors. Thus, the current study examined the role of adolescent unidimensional, interpersonal-affective, and lifestyle-antisocial psy...

The bivariate, empirical association between psychopathic personality disorder (PPD) and violence has been well established. Yet, questions remain about how to explain why this association occurs. To address this conceptual gap, we presented a review of theories of violence related to PPD. Next a conceptual analysis of how psychopathic traits may i...

The Comprehensive Assessment of Psychopathic Personality (CAPP) is a recently developed conceptual model of psychopathy designed to index the disorder across 33 personality traits. Although recent research has evidenced support for the CAPP model with respect to the convergent, criterion, and predictive validity of CAPP instruments, little work has...

The research evidence is very strong for high recidivism rates of violence after discharge from forensic facilities. Big data research has found that a substantial proportion of the forensic population with relapse into violence has a psychosis diagnosis and a criminal record. However, more research on the association between psychotic symptoms and...

Objectives Compared to community samples, rates of suicide are much higher in forensic and correctional settings, yet limited research has focused on the development and improvement of suicide assessment methods used in such contexts. Moreover, despite evidence that suicide assessment varies across Caucasians and African Americans, to our knowledge...

In our "Statement of Concerned Experts on the Use of the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised [PCL-R] in Capital Sentencing to Assess Risk for Institutional Violence," DeMatteo et al. (2020) summarized the relevant empirical research and concluded that the PCL-R cannot and should not be used to make predictions that an individual will engage in serio...

Although the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) are among the most widely used adolescent risk assessment tools, they conceptualize and measure strengths differently. As such, in this study, we compared the predictive validity of SAVRY Protective Total and YLS/C...

Psychopathy as measured by the Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL–R; Hare, 1991, 2003) is related to a range of rule-breaking and antisocial behaviors. Given this association, psychopathy has received considerable attention from researchers and legal professionals over the past several decades. Concerns remain, however, about using PCL-R score...

In this prospective study, we examined the association between three types of mental health symptom clusters (i.e., psychotic, internalizing, and externalizing) and the frequency and severity of violent-behavioral outcomes, and whether community disadvantage, residential instability, and criminogenic facility density moderated these associations. S...

Sexual violence against college women continues to be a pervasive public health issue with approximately one in five women experiencing sexual assault and one in nine women experiencing rape while in college. With national conversation turned toward sexual assault on college campuses, knowledge on how to identify, prevent, and address these inciden...

Even though risk assessment tools are often intended to inform case planning, they do not provide much direct guidance. As such, we developed an intervention-planning tool called the Adolescent Risk Reduction and Resilient Outcomes Work-Plan (ARROW) to accompany the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth. The ARROW includes a decision supp...

Objective This paper reports on a prospective naturalistic study of violent recidivism after discharge from forensic mental health. Main aims were to find predictors of violence and to test the feasibility of a matched pair design for this purpose. Methods Patients from the Safe pilot project (n=18) and a group of controls (n=18) were matched on 1...

In this prospective study, we examined the association between three types of mental health symptom clusters (i.e., psychotic, internalizing, and externalizing) and suicide-related behavior (SRB) and self-harm, and whether community disadvantage and residential instability moderated these associations. Psychotic and internalizing, but not externali...

A systematic review was undertaken to identify empirically supported risk and protective factors associated with intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization among college students. In total, 41 published studies were included. Thirty risk factors were identified in three domains: individual (e.g., substance use), (2) social contextual...

Structured professional judgment (SPJ) is one of two main options for evaluating the risk of violence posed by offenders, forensic psychiatric patients, and civil psychiatric patients. This chapter explains the historical context in which both the actuarial and SPJ approaches to violence risk assessment were developed. The presence of risk factors...

Although the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU) was designed to improve the measurement of callous and unemotional features, research on its psychometric properties is limited. Consequently, we investigated the ICU’s reliability and validity within 123 at-risk community youth who were prospectively followed for six months. The ICU displa...

Using data from 885 male offenders, we examined the role of psychopathic features measured in adolescence on trajectories of intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration in young adulthood while also considering developmental precursors. Three trajectories of IPV perpetration were identified: a no IPV trajectory, a low-level IPV trajectory, and a h...

The identification of dynamic risk and protective factors is important for reducing intimate partner violence (IPV) perpetration among adolescents and young adults. However, little research has examined change over time in putatively dynamic factors or whether these changes are associated with changes in IPV. Using data collected from 885 male offe...

Despite the clear clinical and forensic importance of psychopathy, definitions of psychopathy and the optimal measurement of the disorder are issues of continued controversy. The present research provides an empirical examination of two self-report instruments indexing recent conceptualizations of psychop-athy: the Comprehensive Assessment of Psych...

Accurate prediction of earthquakes, typhoons or viral epidemics is difficult or even impossible. Furthermore, in and of itself, accurate prediction is of little or no use in prevention or mitigation of harm stemming from such disasters. Yet it is still entirely possible to take effective steps to prevent or mitigate harm (e.g. development of buildi...

Life satisfaction in adolescence has been shown to protect against numerous negative outcomes (e.g., substance use, sexual risk-taking), but limited work has directly explored the relationship between life satisfaction and youth violence and offending. As such, we conducted a prospective assessment to explore this relationship among community (n =...

Numerous theories attempt to explain humans' extraordinary prosociality, but predictions are rarely tested among antisocial individuals, whose dampened concern for others offers a particularly strong test of general-izability for prosocial action. To build upon past research demonstrating the emotional benefits of prosociality among non-offending p...

This prospective study assessed the reliability and validity of the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU) in a sample of 70 adolescent offenders. With the exception of the Unemotional subscale, ICU scores showed acceptable reliability. ICU total and Callousness scores demonstrated moderate associations with the Antisocial Process Screening...

Adolescent dating violence, defined as any actual, attempted, or threatened physical harm between current or former dating partners aged 12 to 18, is a serious social and public health problem which is associated with significant costs to victims (e.g., injury, death) and perpetrators (e.g., risk of continued violence against romantic partners in a...

Adolescent dating violence, defined as any actual, attempted, or threatened physical harm between current or former dating partners aged 12 to 18, is a serious social and public health problem which is associated with significant costs to victims (e.g., injury, death) and perpetrators (e.g., risk of continued violence against romantic partners in a...

School-based violence remains an important and developing area of inquiry in the violence risk prevention and threat assessment fields. In particular, teacher-directed violence has been a growing concern and numerous empirical studies have examined the prevalence of and implications associated with such acts (e.g., Dinkes et al., 2009; Reddy et al....

Objective: The Triarchic model of psychopathy (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009) posits that psychopathic personality comprises three domains: Boldness, Meanness, and Disinhibition. The present study aimed to clarify conceptual overlap between contemporary definitions of psychopathy, with particular emphasis given to the relevance of Boldness (i.e...

Physical dating violence (PDV) victimization among adolescents is a serious global problem. Although knowledge of trends in PDV victimization can help guide programming and health policies, little research has examined whether the prevalence of PDV victimization has increased, decreased, or remained stable over time among non-U.S.-based samples of...

Despite an abundance of research on personality disorders (PDs) in the past several decades, the field remains divided on fundamental issues pertaining to the proper conceptualization, measurement, and exploration of personality pathology. Central debates include whether PDs are best modeled as discrete or dimensional entities, whether trait abnorm...

Despite the high prevalence of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD) in youth criminal justice settings, there is currently no research supporting the use of violence risk assessment tools in this population. This study examined the predictive validity of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and the Youth Level of Service/Ca...

This prospective study evaluated the ability of the MAYSI-2 and PAI-A to predict suicide-related behavior (SRB) and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) among adjudicated adolescent offenders on probation. Predictive validity of the MAYSI-2 for SRB and NSSI has generally been postdictively examined among detained adolescents. In addition, no published st...

Mental health problems are disproportionately prevalent in forensic and correctional settings, and there have been numerous attempts to develop screening tools to evaluate individuals in such contexts. This study investigates the clinical utility of the Personality Assessment Screener (PAS; Morey, 1997), a brief self-report measure of risk for emot...

Despite the forensic relevance of psychopathy and the overrepresentation of Hispanics in the United States’ criminal justice system, these two issues remain underexplored, particularly with self-report measures of psychopathy. We investigated the criterion validity of three psychopathy measures among African Americans, Caucasians, and Hispanics in...

Studies examining sex differences in the trends and correlates of physical dating violence (PDV) victimization among youth have generally applied limited statistical techniques to examine sex differences. Thus, using data from 18,441 boys and 17,459 girls who completed the British Columbia Adolescent Health Surveys, we conducted a study to address...

Using data from 338 male offenders, this study examined whether symptoms of mental disorder predicted violent offending trajectories from adolescence into early adulthood. Three violent offending trajectories were identified: an adolescent-limited trajectory (AL), a late-onset persistence (LOP) trajectory, and a high-rate fast desistance (HRFD) tra...

Recently, Sinclair et al. (2016) reported on the development of a new Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) index designed to identify individuals with histories of multiple suicide attempts (Chronic Suicide Risk Index: S_Chron). We evaluated this new index in a sample of over 1000 criminal offenders who had been administered the PAI as part of a...

Violence risk assessment and threat assessment research on school-based violence has remained relatively focused on student-to-student violence and bullying (Galand, Lecocq, & Philippot, 2007). However, there has been a recent shift towards studying the prevalence of violence directed towards teachers (e.g., Daniels, Bradley, & Hayes, 2007; Dinkes...

Mental health professionals are routinely required to assess the risk of violence toward others and identify associated management needs. In this chapter, we provide a general introduction to the practice of violence risk assessment and consolidate the existing literature on best practices in the field. In the first section of this chapter, we disc...

Interventions for offenders often focus on reducing risk rather than increasing quality of life. However, it is possible that being happy and satisfied with life might protect adolescents from subsequent offending. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two prospective studies. In study 1, life satisfaction significantly predicted lower self-reporte...

Although many adolescent risk assessment tools include an emphasis on dynamic factors, little research has examined the extent to which these tools are capable of measuring change. In this article, we outline a framework to evaluate a tool's capacity to measure change. This framework includes the following: (a) measurement error and reliable change...

Few studies have examined the incremental validity of protective factors. The current study examined whether a new measure of protective factors, the Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for Violence Risk – Youth Version (SAPROF-YV; de Vries Robbé, 2015), added incrementally to the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY; Boru...

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits are indicative of risk for violence and aggression in adolescents, and identifying protective factors against these traits is a research priority. This study explores concurrent and prospective associations between character strengths and CU traits in 116 at-risk adolescents. Youth completed measures of gratitude, fo...

Since the publication of Version 1 in 1995 and Version 2 in 1997, the HCR-20 has become one of the world’s most widely used and best validated violence risk assessment instruments. It has been translated into 20 languages and adopted or evaluated in more than 35 countries. Version 3, developed over 5 years on the basis of extensive clinical beta te...

Although experts recommend regularly reassessing adolescents’ risk for violence, it is unclear whether reassessment improves predictions. Thus, in this prospective study, the authors tested 3 hypotheses as to why reassessment might improve predictions, namely the shelf-life, dynamic change, and familiarity hypotheses. Research assistants (RAs) rate...

The Structured Professional Judgement (SPJ) approach is an analytical method used to understand and mitigate the risk for interpersonal violence posed by individual people that is discretionary in essence but relies on evidence-based guidelines to systematize the exercise of discretion. The first SPJ guidelines were published in late 1994 and early...

Callous-unemotional (CU) traits in youth have been associated with increased offending and aggression. Although self-report measures of CU traits have generated controversy, the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU) was developed as a self-report measure of CU traits in youth. Thus far, studies have yielded inconsistent findings with respec...

Adolescent dating violence (ADV) is a social problem with significant physical and emotional consequences. Research has consistently demonstrated an association between Axis II features, such as Psychopathy and Borderline Personality Disorder, and dating/intimate partner violence among adults. However, few studies have examined this association amo...

In recent years, adolescent dating violence (ADV) has received increased attention, given the harmful consequences. Despite the development of tools designed to assess the risk of dating/intimate partner violence in adulthood, these tools were not intended for use with adolescents and, as a result, may be inappropriate. Moreover, although tools hav...

The current study examined the predictive validity of the summary risk rating (SSR) of the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY; Borum et al., 2006) in a sample of 156 male and female adolescent offenders. Using a prospective study design, youth were followed for an average follow-up period of 3.36 years yielding a base rate of 25...

The generalizability of risk assessment measures to female populations remains up for debate; in particular, few studies have made direct comparisons between male and female civil psychiatric patients on protective factors and risk factors relevant to violence risk assessments. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a prospective study...

Dynamic risk and protective factors serve to assess the violence risk level of (forensic) psychiatric patients and offer guidance to clinical interventions. Risk assessment scores on Historical Clinical Risk Management–20 (HCR-20) risk factors and Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for violence risk (SAPROF) protective factors at different...

The triarchic model of psychopathy (Patrick, Fowles, & Krueger, 2009) comprises 3 phenotypic domains: Meanness, Disinhibition, and Boldness. Ongoing controversy surrounds the relevance of Boldness in the conceptualization and assessment of psychopathy. In the current study, undergraduate students (N = 439) completed the Triarchic Psychopathy Measur...

The Antisocial Process Screening Device (APSD) is a well-supported tool for assessing psychopathic features in youth. However, most research with the APSD has been derived from clinical and forensic samples comprised mainly of male Caucasian and African American adolescents. In this prospective study, the incremental and predictive validity of the...

Over the past three decades, much has been learned about risk factors associated with violence. Subsequently, significant advances have occurred in terms of the conceptualization as well as the communication of violence risk; in particular, numerous risk assessment measures have been developed in order to inform violence prevention efforts. However...

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the early and late start typology of criminal behaviour in major mental disorder can be generalized to different populations than evaluated to date and is replicable in two different countries. A Dutch forensic sample (Sample 1) consisted of 260 reports to the court with early start offenders (n = 62...