Assessing high risk offenders with personality disorder

Personality disorder was once a ‘diagnosis of exclusion’ and consequently many people, including offenders, were unable to access appropriate care. Some offenders therefore slipped through the net, with devastating consequences. However, recent developments in the health and criminal justice fields have sought to address this problem. One such initiative was the establishment in the Northwest of England of three specialist multi‐disciplinary Forensic Personality Disorder Assessment and Liaison Teams. Their task is to assess high‐risk offenders with personality disorder and provide a gate keeping and monitoring function to agencies involved in their care and management. This practice‐based paper outlines the work of the Greater Manchester team. It describes the team's approach to the assessment of these individuals and outlines some of the professional and ethical challenges encountered so far.