Evaluations and their use in court.
Dr. Simpson shares his insights from over four decades of conducting adult and juvenile psychosexual / risk assessments.
A psychosexual assessment may address sexual interests and behavior, psychological functioning, treatment needs, and risk of future offending. Those questions draw on personal history, interviews, psychological tests, and risk measures, each with its own purpose and limits. Age, developmental needs, and the circumstances of the alleged offense also matter when interpreting findings. For attorneys, the focus is on how an evaluator supports an opinion and connects it to decisions about placement, treatment, and supervision at different stages of a case.
This is a CLE training Dr. Simpson has provided to the State Bar of Arizona on three occasions.
What the methods address
The CLE distinguishes personal and sexual history interviews, general psychological tests, actuarial risk tools, and structured clinical judgment, emphasizing the different questions those methods address.
Purpose and stage of the case
The CLE connects plea negotiations and sentencing with pretrial and presentence questions about risk, placement, and treatment, alongside ongoing assessment and release. Each stage raises different evaluation questions.
Population and method fit
The CLE considers adolescents, female offenders, intellectual disabilities, and autism as distinct assessment contexts. Age and generalizability inform comparisons between a measure’s development population and the individual being evaluated.
