The risk factor – (Re-) visiting adult offender risk assessments within criminal justice practice

The key aim of this article is to provide a more useful account of risk assessment practices of adult offenders within criminal justice by revisiting and re-examining the development and utility of risk assessment tools as both a process and a practice for measuring risk when explaining offending behaviour. This article teases out the extent to which advancing technology and the development of professional knowledge have not only come to symbolise the ways in which risk has come to be managed by the Criminal Justice System, but also the extent to which an invested belief in complex and scientific ways of thinking and knowing risk have contributed towards framing a dominant discourse of risk and offending. This article concludes by suggesting that alternative ways of thinking about risk have been largely abandoned in favour of an actuarial-based epistemological construction of risk and risk-taking behaviour, in effect, creating a single account of risk within criminal justice.