Using the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG)

Introduction

The Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG; Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 2006) is a tool that can be used to estimate statistically the risk of recidivism. It is comprised of 12 items that are associated with a risk of re-offending and is completed with all available information. You can download the full VRAG in PDF format. The Sexual Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG) is reviewed in another article.

The VRAG is an actuarial risk assessment, involving a mathematical technique applied to determines what factors were present in offenders who later went on to commit violent crimes. (Brown & Singh, 2014) This approach eliminates the bias found in unstructured judgement.

The VRAG has been examined in over 40 studies, and has been found effective even with individuals who have a lower IQ. (Camilleri & Quinsey, 2011)

Completing the VRAG

The first step to completing the VRAG is to complete the Childhood & Adolescent Taxon Scale. Below, where a request for information relates to an “index offense” that is the one that led to the individual entering the Criminal Justice system

Childhood & Adolescent Taxon Scale (CATS) Worksheet

This scale includes 8 items that are scored from 0 to 1, based on the coding guidelines provided. These items are:

1. Elementary School Maladjustment
2. Teenage Alcohol Problem
3. Childhood Aggression Rating
4. More Than 3 DSM Conduct Disorder Symptoms
5. Ever suspended or expelled from school
6. Arrested under the age of 16
7. Lived with both biological parents to age 16 (except for death of parents)

Conduct Disorder Symptoms

Next, the assessor will complete the list of Conduct Disorder symptoms, circling those that occurred before age 16 except for items 13 and 15 which are before aged 16:

• 1. Often bullied, threatened or intimidated others
• 2. Often initiated physical fights
• 3. Used a weapon that could cause serious physical harm to others (e.g., a bat, brick, broken bottle, knife, gun)
• 4. Was physically cruel to people
• 5. Was physically cruel to animals
• 6. Stolen while confronting a victim (e.g., mugging, purse snatching, extortion, robbery)
• 7. Forced someone into sexual activity
• 8. Deliberately engaged in fire setting with the intention of causing serious damage
• 9. Deliberately destroyed others’ property (other than by fire setting)
• 10. Broken into someone else’s house, car, or building
• 11. Often lied to obtain goods or favors or to avoid obligations (i.e., “cons” others)
• 12. Stolen items of nontrivial value without confronting a victim (like shoplifting, theft, or forgery)
• 13. Before [age] 13, stayed out late at night, despite parental prohibitions
• 14. Ran away from home overnight (or longer) at least twice while living in parental or parental surrogate home (or once without returning for a lengthy period)
• 15. Before [age] 13, was often truant from school

Cormier-Lang Criminal History Scores for Non-Violent Offenses

This scoring form allows you to answer item number 5 below, the Criminal History Score for Non-Violent Offenses Prior to the Index Offense. This score is developed by counting the number of non-violent offenses and applying a weight to them. For instance, bank robbery is counted x7 while Indecent Exposure is counted x2. So an individual who has two instances of Indecent Exposure and 1 instance of Bank Robbery would have (2×2 = 4) + (1×7 = 7) = 4+7 = 11.

Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) Items

Next are the 12 VRAG items. The tool provides detailed coding instructions for each of these:

1. Lived with both biological parents to age 16 (except for death of parent):
2. Elementary School Maladjustment:
3. History of alcohol problems
4. Marital status (at the time of or prior to index offense):
5. Criminal history score for nonviolent offenses prior to the index offense
6. Failure on prior conditional release (includes parole or probation violation or revocation, failure to comply, bail violation, and any new arrest while on conditional release):
7. Age at index offense
8. Victim Injury (for index offense; the most serious is scored):
9. Any female victim (for index offense)
10. Meets DSM criteria for any personality disorder (must be made by appropriately licensed or certified professional)
11. Meets DSM criteria for schizophrenia (must be made by appropriately licensed or certified professional)
12. a. Psychopathy Checklist score (if available, otherwise use item 12.b. CATS score)
13. (Technically 12b) bCATS score (from the CATS worksheet)

Scoring the VRAG

Determining Risk

Risk categories are provided in the VRAG manual. They are approximated here although more detail is available in the complete manual. For each score, if an individual is close to the next score you should list them as a combination of the two. For instance an individual whose score is -10, -9 or -8 would be listed as Low-Medium rather than just Low.

• -24 to -8 is Low Risk
• -7 to +13 is Medium Risk
• +14 to +32 is High Risk

Determining Rate of Recidivism

The risk of recidivism is presented below, from the same manual (pages 283-286):

This is to be interpreted as a percentage. For instance a score of -10 is in the -14 to -8 category; therefore an individual would have a 7 year recidivism rate of 12% and a 10 year recidivism rate of 24%.

References

American Psychological Association. (2006) Quinsey, V.L., Harris, G.T., Rice, M.E. & Cormier, C.A. (2006) 2nd Ed. Violent Offenders: Appraising and Managing Risk. Washington D.C: American Psychological Association.

Brown, J. & Singh, J.P. (2014) Forensic Risk Assessment: A Beginner’s Guide. Archives of Forensic Psychology. 1(1). 49-59. Retrieved on January 20, 2017 from http://www.archivesofforensicpsychology.com/web/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Brown-and-Singh1.pdf

Camilleri, J.A. & Quinsey, V.L. (2011) Appraising the risk of sexual and violent recidivism among intellectually disabled offenders. Psychology, Crime & Law. 17(1) 59-74