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As Monahan indicates in his preface, this monograph reflects the work of many years research into the problem of the clinical prediction of violence. These 134 pages are packed with a truly daunting number of studies, facts and critical examinations of this difficult problem.
From the first chapter Introduction to a Controversy, in which
Monahan discusses the difficulty of predicting violence while stressing the moral and political issues raised by such predictions, he engages his reader. The interface of the law and the mental health profession is of growing importance. It is the rare mental health professional who can afford to be unaware of the issues raised by Monahan.
Monahan builds a strong case for combining skills in clinical prediction with statistical approaches to improving clinical prediction. Knowledge and use of the actuarial correlates of violent behavior greatly increases the ability of the mental health professional to predict violence. Monahan makes the point that the single most important predictor of violence is the base rate of violence in the population from which the patient is drawn.
Because Monahan sees violence as an interaction between the perpetrator and his environment (including the people in his environment), he stresses the need for more research into this interaction. Indeed, he sees this as the primary avenue for increasing reliability of predictions of violence in the future.
Finally, Monahan repeatedly states his belief that the mental health professional should not assume the burden of deciding what is to be done with a client's life in forensic cases. The mental health professional should state the facts as clearly as possible. It is the law which must decide how these facts are to be used.
This monograph is well worth reading even by those who are not involved in forensic work.