Forensic psychiatric assessments in practice: a blind study of different forensic psychiatrists' assessments of the same cases

Five senior psychiatrists from different forensic psychiatric settings in Sweden were given the task of assessing, independently of each other, material consisting of 40 randomly selected forensic psychiatric reports of non-psychotic offenders, written previously by other forensic psychiatrists. The results show a remarkable degree of discrepancy in decision making among forensic psychiatrists. Overall, the differences appear to be random, but in some cases there were even negative correlations between assessments made by certain psychiatrists, that is, if one psychiatrist assessed an offender as in need of treatment, another one assessed him as not in need of treatment. Copyright © 1996 Whurr Publishers Ltd.