The use and reporting practice of psychological tests in German risk and criminal responsibility expert reports

ABSTRACT

Assessment reports about individuals charged/convicted of offenses have an influence on significant personal consequences for examinees by sentencing decisions regarding placement in a forensic hospital or prison. As there is evidence that unstructured clinical judgments have limited accuracy, research-based practice recommendations call for the use of standardised measures and for experts to base their assessments on empirically supported psychological tests. Previous findings on the actual use of psychometric tests indicate an increasing but still heterogeneous use of psychological tests, highlighting the continued relevance of a professional debate on best diagnostic practice. A potential shortcoming, however, is that these studies almost exclusively relied on clinicians’ self-reports. The present paper presents an analysis based on the actual (retrospectively assessed) usage in German risk (n = 489), criminal responsibility assessment reports (n = 272), and corresponding psychological test reports (n = 313) between 1990 and 2016. In accordance with previous survey data, results showed a frequent usage of a diverse range of psychological tests. Contrarily, performance-based personality tests, typically subsumed under so-called (semi-)projective personality tests, are still implemented regularly in forensic-clinical practice, although the number and frequency seem to be decreasing. Taken together, the findings gain an important insight into the psychological testing practive in forensic settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological test
• forensic assessment
• risk assessment
• criminal responsibility
• expert reports

Data availability statement

Data available on request due to privacy/ethical restrictions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The university hospital institutions in Berlin and Munich provide external forensic assessment reports for a diverse number of courts or public prosecutors as well as education and training of forensic students, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other clinicians working in the forensic field. The penitentiary in Freiburg is run by the federal state Baden–Wuerttemberg in the southwest of Germany and has the primary goals of imprisonment and rehabilitation of prisoners. At a penitentiary, assessment reports are not done by the institution itself, but are mostly obtained by external, residential psychiatric or psychological experts, who are in most cases not affiliated to a specific academic or scientific institution. Overall, the institutions represent common forensic-clinical practice, as psychiatric hospitals and penitentiaries are not just asked regularly but in the majority of cases to conduct assessment reports in Germany.

2 Typically, and historically classified as (semi-)projective measurements (Meyer & Kurtz, 2006; Viglione & Rivera, 2003), in this study referred to as performance-based personality measures.

3 The Photo Hand Test (FHT) is a diagnostic measure aimed to capture aggressive dispositions. It uses photographs of hand gestures which test persons are required to interpret (Belschner et al., 1971).

4 The Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Test is a traditionally so-called semi-projective method used to measure frustration tolerance. It consists of 24 drawings which present a frustrating situation which test persons are required to interpret by identifying with and answering as the frustrated person in a dialogue (Hörmann & Moog, 1957).