Risk assessment in the Netherlands

Structured risk assessment tools were introduced in the adult forensic mental health system in the netherlands during the late 1990s. Tool use in other forensic settings, such as adolescent forensic psychiatry and the probation service, soon followed. The implementation of structured risk assessment was paralleled by the start of a dutch empirical research tradition concerning the psychometric properties of violence risk assessment tools. During the past decade, leave decision making for forensic patients has become stricter, resulting in an increase of inpatient treatment duration in the dutch terbeschikkingstelling system. A brief description of new tools developed by dutch scholars for the assessment of protective factors for violence risk and violence risk assessment in females is presented.