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The Risk Management Authority in Scotland and the forensic psychiatrist as risk assessor

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Laurence Tuddenham
Affiliation:
Leverndale Hospital, 510 Crookston Road, Glasgow, G53 7TU, email: ltuddenham@nhs.net
John Baird
Affiliation:
Leverndale Hospital
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The Risk Management Authority (RMA), Scotland's new body which oversees the conduct of assessments of convicted offenders placed on risk assessment orders, recently held its first annual lecture. This was given by Scotland's new Solicitor General, who observed that risk assessment orders are likely to be reserved for ‘extraordinary crimes committed by extraordinary people’. The first risk assessment orders have been made by Scottish courts and the risk assessors' reports are awaited with interest, not least in England, which has taken a different approach to dangerous offenders (Darjee & Crichton, 2002). It seems timely to review the more novel aspects of the Scottish system and the issues they raise for forensic psychiatry.

Type
Opinion & debate
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2007

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