This scoping review examines the current landscape of police risk and threat assessment in England and Wales, identifying origin, breadth and scope of application, as well as empirical efficacy. The analysis highlights a strong adherence to core principles of risk and threat assessment, with structured professional judgement (SPJ) approaches being favoured. The most rigorous and empirically validated assessments are found at the individual or typological level, and relate to sexual and violent offenders, domestic abuse, threats to public figures, and indecent image offenders. In contrast, issues are identified in application of dynamic assessments related to decision-making and vulnerability related risk, as well as typological assessments regarding missing persons, police custody, honour-based abuse, anti-social behaviour, and mental health, where frameworks are either absent, new and untested, lack empirical foundations, or are inconsistently applied. At the strategic level, risk and threat governance instruments remain largely unevaluated despite their central role in setting priorities at local and national levels. The discussion highlights the challenge in the trade-off between breadth and depth. Dynamic models seek to raise standards and consistency, while sacrificing the precision often provided by specialist tools, which remain narrowly applied. Finally, recurring issues of repurposing tools across domains and inconsistent human application highlight that the limitations of assessment are not solely technical but also institutional and primarily relate to culture, resources and training.
Eric Halford (Thu,) studied this question.