The classification of violence risk

John Monahan, University of Virginia School of Law
Henry J. Steadman, Clarke Institute of Psychiatry
Paul S. Appelbaum, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Thomas Grisso, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Edward P. Mulvey, University of Pittsburgh
Loren H. Roth, University of Pittsburgh
Pamela Clark Robbins, Policy Research Associates Inc
Steven M. Banks, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Eric Silver, Policy Research Associates Inc.

Abstract

The Classification of Violence Risk (COVR) is an interactive software program designed to estimate the risk that a person hospitalized for mental disorder will be violent to others. The software leads the evaluator through a chart review and a brief interview with the patient. At the end of this interview, the software generates a report that contains a statistically valid estimate of the patient's violence risk-ranging from a 1% to a 76% likelihood of violence-including the confidence interval for that estimate, and a list of the risk factors that the program took into account to produce the estimate. In this article, the development of the COVR software is described and several issues that arise in its administration are discussed.