Assessing risk among women who perpetrate intimate partner abuse

This paper presents a prospective evaluation of the predictive validity of three risk assessment instruments in a sample of Australian women identified by police as intimate partner abuse (IPA) perpetrators. Using a subsample from Spivak et al. (2020), 410 female IPA perpetrators were screened using the Victoria

Police Screening Assessment for Family Violence Risk (VP-SAFvR) and evaluated alongside two samples of 60 and 229 female IPA perpetrators assessed using the Brief Spousal Assault Form for the Evaluation of Risk (B-SAFER) and a modified version of the Lethality Screen respectively. Of the three instruments, the VPSAFvR possessed indicators of effective discrimination (i.e. sensitivity, specificity, area under the curve) and predictive validity (i.e. positive predictive value, negative predictive value) on general IPA recidivism and its intended outcome of family or intimate partner abuse. The B-SAFER risk judgement similarly predicted its intended outcome of physical IPA recidivism, with notable indicators of discrimination and predictive validity. The results of the Modified Lethality Screen were conversely mixed on measures of discrimination and prediction for its intended outcome of severe IPA. The current findings suggest that these instruments function consistently for women and men who are identified by police as perpetrating family or intimate partner abuse.