Psychometric properties and predictive validity of a police version of a violence risk screen : a pilot study

The Violence Risk Screening – Police Version (V-RISK-POL) is a seven-itemscreening tool for use at police stations
by police officers and law enforcement officials to assist in the process of decision making regarding release, restrictive
measures or arrest for apprehended individuals where the risk of future violence must be considered.
The screen is based on the V-RISK-10, originally developed for emergency psychiatry.We examined psychometric
properties and the prospective predictive validity of future violent convictions for the V-RISK-POL in a sample
of 111 persons arrested for suspicion of violent crimes. Seventeen persons were convicted for a newviolent crime
committed during the 24–40 months follow-up. The V-RISK-POL demonstrated good internal consistency;
Cronbach’s alpha = 0.81 (95% CI = 0.75–0.86) and moderate predictive validity; the area under the curve of
the receiving operator characteristics (AUC) = 0.753 (95% CI = 0.644–0.843). Further research on larger and
more heterogeneous samples is necessary to examine whether the screen may be useful in the police context.
Keywords: screen, risk assessment, police officers, prospective, violence recidivism