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Social Policy Implications of the Inability to Predict Violence
Author(s) -
Monahan John,
Cummings Lesley
Publication year - 1975
Publication title -
journal of social issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.618
H-Index - 122
eISSN - 1540-4560
pISSN - 0022-4537
DOI - 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1975.tb00766.x
Subject(s) - prison , criminology , psychology , intervention (counseling) , mental health , criminal justice , social psychology , economic justice , empirical research , political science , psychiatry , law , philosophy , epistemology
Much current social policy in the areas of mental health and criminal justice is based on the supposition that psychologists and psychiatrists can accurately predict those who will be physically violent to another. A review of the empirical literature, however, reveals that violence is vastly overpredicted, regardless of who is doing the predicting or how the predictions are made. This predictive inaccuracy has several immediate social policy implications: Indeterminate prison sentencing should be abolished, civil commitment and preventive detention should be substantially curtailed, and legal safeguards should be infused into early intervention programs.