Risk assessment decisions for violent political extremism 2009-02 : Décisions relatives à l'évaluation du risque d'extrémisme politique violent

The author wishes to acknowledge the contribution of Wayne L. Hanniman of the National Security and Criminal Investigations Division of the RCMP. [...] Points of view, information and the tools included in this document are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official position, policy or viewpoint of Public Safety Canada or the Government of Canada. [...] The major goals of the project were to identify and compare the specific characteristics and factors of those who perpetrate “general” criminal violence and those who perpetrate ideologically motivated violence, to highlight the salient differences among the historical, contextual, attitudinal and protective risk factors of these types of criminal violence and to construct a new tool to assess the [...] The authors of the HCR-20, one of the most widely used risk assessment guides for violence, specifically state that the scope of the guide should be “restricted mainly to settings where there is a high proportion of persons with a history of violence and a strong suggestion of mental illness or personality disorder” (Webster et al., 1997). [...] The more accurate the identification of the motivations and the character of prior violence, the more accurate will be the prediction of future violence.