Author(s):
Andreas Frei & Juliane Fricke-Glöckner

Institution:
Fachstelle Forensik, Erwachsenenpsychiatrie Baselland

Title:
Threat Assessment of severe domestic violence using the risk assessment instrument DyRiAS – an evaluation study using cases from Switzerland

Abstract:
Many cases of domestic homicides are preceded by threats. The computer-assisted tool DyRiAS analyses characteristic patterns and behaviours in the communication of putative perpetrators of future serious domestic violence. It consists of 39 items by which a putative perpetrator can be assigned to 6 different risk groups (0 to five).

The forensic-psychiatric expertises of all 60 cases of domestic violence which occurred in the years 2000 to 2012 in Central Switzerland were analysed by DyRiAS and the means of cases with attempted or completed domestic homic­ide (N = 13) were compared to those with “simple” domestic violence (N = 47).

The average DyRiAS-figure in the first group was 4.3, the one in the second group 3.5. This difference was statistically significant. The sensitivity was 0.85, the specifity 0.4, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.77; which means the accuracy between lethal domestic and “simple” domestic violence was greater than in any known screening tool for domestic violence.

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