About Capital Punishment

Assessing Violence Risk in Offenders Facing Capital Punishment

According to Tanner (2004), assessing the violence risk of offenders facing capital punishment is critical to ensuring that the offenders are not put to death by mistake. The assessment’s precision and precession avoid jurisdictional errors by presenting crucial view points. Proper and effective psychological examinations, for example, can yield accurate results for predicting the likelihood of an individual posing repeated grave threats to society, punishable by murder.

Examining Mental Health of Offenders

Examining the offender’s mental health is one of the psychological examinations that an individual would do. Certain questions constructed for the interview would possibly tell whether or not the danger or harm caused by the offender was due to drug use, delusions or mental disorders which a psychologist understand their manifestation (Roesch, Ronald, and Patricia, 2013). Therefore, some of the important questions that would be making part of the interview including asking direct questions that lead to establishing the offender’s current thoughts, feelings, and fantasies of possible re-offending. Ask about the history of such violent behaviors while ensuring that the offender concisely describes the circumstances under which they took place. Ask the offender about his or her experience with the victim to establish any form of regrets or derived pleasure. Most of all, ask about any identified inconsistencies if any through a language that limits possibilities of the offender being defensive.

Importance of Violence Risk Assessment

Thoughts and feelings about this particular type of assessment are that it is necessary and good for society as a whole. There are historical records where offenders of crimes subject to capital punishment have been sentenced to death while they end up serving such sentences with no repeat of similar dangerous offenses. Hence, the assessment contributes to understanding what type of violence the offender commits, the severity of the violence, the time, as well as the contexts that prompted the offense (Tanner, 204).

References

Roesch, R., & Zapf, P. A. (2013). Forensic assessments in criminal and civil law: A handbook for lawyers. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tanner, J. M. (2004). Continuing Threat to Whom: Risk Assessment in Virginia Capital Sentencing Hearings. Cap. Def. J., 17, 381.