[The Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide (SORAG)]

Abstract

In North America, the use of actuarial instruments is considered to be state of the art in the assessment of offender recidivism risk. One of these instruments is the "Sex Offender Risk Appraisal Guide" (SORAG), which was developed specifically for the use in sex offender risk assessment. The present review investigates the current state of knowledge regarding the instrument's validity specifically for its use in German-speaking countries. Overall the results speak for the instrument's good discriminatory power. However, this is not true to the same degree for all types of sex offender populations. The discriminatory power is especially good in the subpopulation of child molesters. Part of the present review is a German translation of the instrument authorised by the developers of the SORAG.