Risk domains and factors of the Multi-Level Guidelines: An updated examination of their support in the literature

While the field of violence risk assessment has seen tremendous growth in the area of individually oriented violence, risk assessment for group-based violence (GBV) is still in its infancy. One tool developed specifically for assessing this form of violence is the Multi-Level Guidelines (MLG; Cook, Hart, & Kropp, 2015), which is comprised of 16 risk factors nested into four domains: Individual, Individual-Group, Group, and Group-Societal. Given the rapid pace at which the research on terrorism risk factors, in particular, has developed (Gill, 2015b), this review sought to update the systematic review from which the MLG was developed and examine the extent to which its domains and factors are supported by recent empirical research on GBV. A total of 151 studies were reviewed, spanning several forms of GBV. Overall, the content and structure of the MLG appear to be broadly supported by recent empirical research, although the evidence base for the Individual-Group and Group domains is still relatively small, and the strength of much of this research is limited by methodological constraints. The MLG and the HCR-20 V3 (Douglas, Hart, Webster, & Belfrage, 2013) were then applied to a brief series of case studies of GBV in order to demonstrate the applicability of the MLG to this form of violence, and to compare it to the HCR-20 V3 in this respect. While both tools were found to be broadly applicable, it was clear that the MLG captured specific risk factors that are unique to GBV.