How Can Structured Professional Judgment Help Forensic Psychologists Strengthen Risk Formulation in Criminal Court?

Traditional actuarial approaches use fixed algorithms to estimate the probability of future violence or reoffending. These tools can provide useful information, especially when the legal question requires attention to group-based risk estimates. However, a probability estimate alone may not explain why a person poses risk, how that risk could unfold, or what evidence would show that risk is increasing or decreasing.

Structured Professional Judgment approaches risk differently. SPJ uses empirically supported risk factors, but it requires the forensic psychologist to interpret those factors in the context of the individual case. The evaluator considers mental illness, substance use, insight, treatment adherence, stressors, history of violence, response to supervision, access to supports, victim access, and current environment.

This case-specific reasoning is especially important because clinical stability and legal status often change over time. A person may function well on a secure hospital unit but become more vulnerable during transition to the community. A patient may deny violent ideation but show worsening paranoia, reduced medication adherence, or increasing agitation. Another person may have a serious violence history but also demonstrate insight, treatment engagement, symptom disclosure, and reliable use of supports.

The value of SPJ is that it helps forensic psychologists explain not only whether risk exists, but how risk is likely to emerge. This explanation is what makes the opinion useful for treatment teams, attorneys, judges, risk review boards, and community providers.

One of the major advantages of SPJ is that it allows forensic psychologists to consider strengths and protective factors in a systematic way. Risk assessment that only identifies vulnerabilities can become overly static, overly pessimistic, or insufficiently useful for legal decision-making. Protective factors help evaluators identify what is working, what should be preserved, and what may support safe movement toward less restrictive conditions.

Protective factors may include medication adherence, positive treatment alliance, willingness to disclose symptoms, family involvement, stable housing, abstinence from substances, prosocial activities, insight into warning signs, and response to structured supervision. These factors do not erase risk. They help explain the conditions under which risk may be more manageable.

For example, a patient who accepts medication, regularly discloses symptoms, and asks staff for help when stress increases may have meaningful protective factors that should be included in the formulation. Those strengths can become part of the risk opinion. The evaluator can explain which protective factors are stable, which remain fragile, and which would need to be monitored if the person receives increased privileges or community access.

This strength-based formulation is not the same as minimizing risk. It is a more complete way of explaining risk. SPJ asks what increases concern, what reduces concern, and what evidence supports each conclusion. This balanced analysis can help courts avoid both unnecessary restriction and premature release.

SPJ is especially useful in Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity cases and other forensic hospital settings where patients may move through step-down processes. These processes may include transfer from secure units to less restrictive units, escorted privileges, unescorted grounds access, community passes, furloughs, or conditional release.

These decisions should not be based solely on the passage of time or general impressions that a person is “doing better.” They should be connected to documented change in risk-relevant functioning. SPJ helps evaluators organize that change.

Dynamic variables are particularly important. These variables include insight, violent ideation, symptom disclosure, medication adherence, substance cravings, impulse control, treatment engagement, and response to supervision. Repeated SPJ-informed evaluations can help show whether risk has changed, which factors remain active, and what conditions are needed to support safe transition.

For example, one patient may appear calm in a secure setting but remain unable to identify warning signs, disclose symptoms, or explain how mental illness contributed to the index offense. Another patient may continue to experience residual symptoms but reliably reports them, reality-tests them, follows medication recommendations, and uses supports before symptoms escalate. SPJ helps distinguish between these presentations.

Questions about which version of a tool is used, how risk factors are interpreted, and how formulations change over time are not merely technical. They can affect legal decisions. Research asking whether risk formulations differ depending on which version of the HCR-20 is used highlights why evaluators must be clear about their method, the structure of the tool, and the reasoning that links assessment data to the final opinion.

A high-quality SPJ formulation identifies more than risk factors. It identifies risk-relevant treatment targets. This distinction helps keep the post separate from general risk mitigation writing. The purpose here is not simply to say what should be done next. The purpose is to explain why specific treatment targets matter to the legal risk opinion.

For example, if risk is driven by psychotic decompensation and medication refusal, then medication adherence, insight into illness, symptom disclosure, and relapse prevention become central to the formulation. If risk is driven by substance use and impulsivity, then relapse prevention, refusal skills, peer avoidance, and structured supervision may carry more weight. If risk is driven by trauma reactivity or perceived threat, then emotional regulation, coping skills, and reality testing may be especially important.

SPJ also helps identify critical items, or red flags, that require immediate attention. These may include emerging violent ideation, refusal of medication, increased paranoia, escalating substance cravings, access to a target, attempts to leave supervision, or deterioration in sleep and functioning. When these indicators are identified clearly, the court and treatment team can better understand what would signal increased concern.

This shared language improves communication across systems. Treatment teams can focus on risk-relevant needs. Courts can understand why certain restrictions remain necessary. Community providers can know what to monitor after release. The assessment becomes a bridge between clinical care and legal decision-making.

The Short-Term Assessment of Risk and Treatability, or START, is one example of an SPJ tool that explicitly considers dynamic factors as both strengths and vulnerabilities. That dual focus reflects a broader SPJ principle: risk formulation should identify not only what may go wrong, but also what may help prevent escalation.

Criminal court evaluations are often scrutinized closely. Attorneys may ask why an evaluator selected a particular tool, how risk factors were rated, whether collateral information was sufficient, why protective factors were credited or discounted, and how the evaluator moved from assessment data to the final opinion. SPJ strengthens defensibility by requiring structured reasoning.

SPJ is not unstructured clinical intuition. It provides definitions, guidelines, and a transparent process for evaluating evidence for and against the relevance of specific risk factors. The forensic psychologist still uses judgment, but that judgment is organized, documented, and tied to the facts of the case.

This structure is especially important when the court must consider whether a person presents a substantial danger to others. The opinion should not rest on vague concern, broad diagnostic labels, or the evaluator’s general experience. It should explain the person’s risk history, current functioning, relevant symptoms, response to treatment, protective factors, remaining vulnerabilities, likely risk scenarios, and the limits of available information.

A defensible SPJ opinion should also make uncertainty visible. Violence risk assessment does not eliminate uncertainty. It organizes uncertainty so decision-makers can understand what is known, what is not known, what assumptions are being made, and what information would change the evaluator’s opinion.

Forensic psychologists in criminal court settings often occupy a difficult position. They must consider treatment needs, legal standards, public safety, institutional resources, and the risk of unnecessary restriction. SPJ supports that work because it allows evaluators to hold multiple realities at once.

A person may have made meaningful progress and still require structure. A person may have residual symptoms and still be safely managed with supports. A person may have a serious violence history but show improved insight, adherence, and risk management. Conversely, a person may appear calm but remain unable to disclose symptoms, accept treatment, or recognize warning signs.

SPJ helps avoid oversimplified conclusions. It supports opinions that are nuanced enough for clinical reality and clear enough for legal decision-making. In criminal court, that balance is essential.

Forensic psychologists using SPJ can help courts understand not only what happened in the past, but what is likely to matter in the future. They can identify mechanisms of risk, protective factors that reduce concern, warning signs that should trigger reassessment, and conditions under which the person may be safely managed.

The future of SPJ in criminal court will likely involve greater attention to dynamic change, protective factors, treatment response, risk communication, and repeated reassessment. Courts and forensic systems increasingly need evaluations that do more than classify risk. They need assessments that explain why risk is present, what evidence supports that opinion, and how the person’s risk may change under different conditions.

Forensic psychologists are well-positioned to provide that bridge. When SPJ is used well, it helps translate complex clinical information into a clear, defensible risk formulation. It allows evaluators to explain how symptoms, behaviors, context, and supports interact. It also helps ensure that opinions are tied to the person’s actual functioning rather than generic assumptions about diagnosis, offense type, or legal status.

Structured Professional Judgment strengthens violence risk assessment by giving forensic psychologists a disciplined way to formulate risk. This formulation role is what distinguishes SPJ from a general risk mitigation plan. Mitigation planning asks what should be done to reduce risk. SPJ-informed formulation explains why particular risks matter, how they may unfold, which protective factors are relevant, and what evidence supports the evaluator’s opinion.

In criminal court, that distinction is critical. Judges, attorneys, hospitals, and review boards need more than a label or score. They need a clear explanation of the person’s risk-relevant history, current functioning, dynamic vulnerabilities, protective factors, likely risk scenarios, and conditions for safe management.

When SPJ is used carefully, it helps forensic psychologists produce opinions that are both clinically grounded and legally useful. It does not remove professional judgment from the process. It makes that judgment more transparent, structured, and defensible. In doing so, SPJ helps courts and treatment systems make decisions that are more individualized, more accountable, and better connected to the realities of risk.

eBook

• The Criminal Court Expert
  
  

Training

• Limited-Time Discounted Bundle of Three Criminal Court Expert Trainings
• Criminal Forensic Assessment Certificate
• Foundations of Violence Risk Assessment and Management
• Structured Professional Judgment and Racial Disparities in Risk Assessment
• Advanced Issues in the Assessment of Risk for Violence: Formulation
• Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) Overview

Blog Posts

• The Evolution of the Structured Professional Judgement Approach to Risk Assessment
• Dr. Stephen Hart on the SPJ Approach to Risk Assessment
• Do Risk Formulations Differ Depending on which Version of the HCR-20 is used?
• General Violence Risk: A Structured Professional Judgment Approach
• How Do I, as a Forensic Psychologist, Prepare Violence Risk Assessments that Support Expert Testimony in Institutional Settings?