Violence risk assessment in women: The value of the Female Additional Manual

This chapter discusses the development of the Female Additional Manual as well as some preliminary empirical results with the tool. It demonstrates the importance of acknowledging gender differences in the forensic field and adequately conducting gender-sensitive risk assessments. Violence risk assessment provides insight into risk and protective factors and offers concrete guidelines for risk management and treatment and is thus of great importance for society as well as for patients/offenders. Research has demonstrated that female violence is more often reactive and relational and less often characterised as instrumental and sexual. Violence within psychiatric or criminal justice settings can have major impact on victims and witnesses and may lead to other impacts, such as high financial costs. Research has demonstrated that unstructured clinical judgment of violence risk is sensitive to sex-based biases and that mental health professionals of both genders tend to underestimate the risk for violence in female psychiatric patients.