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Assessing Sex Offenders: Problems and Pitfalls | 
 enlarge | Author: Terence W. Campbell
Publisher: Charles C. Thomas Publisher
Category: Book
List Price: $74.95
Buy New: $74.94
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New (5) Used (3) from $59.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 1592005
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 350
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.4
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 7.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0398077738
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.153019
EAN: 9780398077730
ASIN: 0398077738
Publication Date: November 2007
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| Customer Reviews:
 and the honest title reveals the honest content May 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
If sex offender evaluations are truly based on science, it should be no surprise that the science of evaluations must be subjected to rigorous peer review checking whether their methodology complies with proper scientific principles of research and proof.
Clinical experience does not prove anything, in fact, Dr. Campbell cites to research that shows that confidence of clinical psychologists is in reverse correlation with accuracy of their findings. Therefore Dr. Campbell's lack of clinical experience with sex offenders does not make him unqualified, as the previous reviewer suggests, as an experimental psychologist to render the opinion he is rendering, on compliance of evaluations to scientific standards. In fact, that is exactly what is necessary for such evaluations - that before a clinical psychologist starts gaining any "experience" with treating sex offenders, he or she must first diagnose them properly using reliable scientific methods, which is sorely lacking.
Also, a scientist providing a review of a scientific methodology is not obliged to offer solutions, it's quite a different task and one that Dr. Campbell has never promised to include in his book.
Any diagnosis sounding like "not otherwise specified" or, a diagnosis where mental health professionals intentionally conceal that raping might be an uncontrollable behavior, simply to deny a patient the opportunity for a successful insanity defense in a criminal trial is a betrayal of Hyppocratic oath.
If a doctor creating diagnostic guidelines would intentionally omit a symptom of a brain tumor, that it can push a person to commit violent acts, simply to subject the patient to criminal liability when he in fact does not possess the proper mental state to be culpable, which the doctor very well knows, is preposterous. Same applies to a pharmacologist who "omits" to mention on the drug label that one of the side effects of the drug is to cause involuntary violent behaviors. If a self-respecting oncologist or pharmacologist cannot omit such symptoms material to their pateint's potential criminal culpability, then what kind of public policy would justify that a self-respecting psychiatrist would do the same to his patient?
Thank you, Dr. Campbell, for your honest book revealing that evaluations are mostly subjective, based on fear factor rather than on scientific methods, are contrary to relevant sex offender recidivist statistics, do not comply with APA's Standards of Educational and Psychological Testing, are not rooted even in the subjective diagnostic categories of DSM-IV and are using the factors which are not relevant to recidivism of vastly heterogenous sex offender population. Science must not be politically correct, must be very simply the journey in search of truth, and not a disguise for law enforcement.
 If This Book Had an Honest Title... January 16, 2008
7 out of 10 found this review helpful
almost no one would have bought it. It's not about assessing sex offenders at all. It's an attack on the civil commitment of sex offenders. The author spends the entire book attacking the assessment methods used in the civil commitment process. Even this attack is false, since Campbell is an ideologue who opposes committing sex offenders and has a new line of attack every year. It's not surprising that Dr. Campbell has no suggestions at all on how sex offenders should be assessed, since he has never worked with sex offenders. He's too busy writing books attacking things other people do. The ethical code of the American Psychological Association prohibits psychologists from practicing outside their area of knowledge, but apparently Dr. Campbell is above such petty rules. For anyone who needs real information about evaluating sex offenders, see Dennis Doren's book.
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