STATIC-99 Coding Rules

Revised - 2003

How To Use This Manual
In most cases, scoring a STATIC-99 is fairly straightforward for an experienced evaluator. If you are unfamiliar with this instrument we suggest that you turn to the back pages of this manual and find the one-page STATIC-99 Coding Form. You may want to keep a copy of this to one side as you review the manual.

We strongly recommend that you read pages 3 to 21 and the section “Scoring the STATIC-99 and Computing the Risk Estimates” before you score the STATIC-99. These pages explain the nature of the STATIC-99 as a risk assessment instrument; to whom this risk assessment instrument may be applied; the role of self-report; exceptions for juvenile, developmentally delayed, and institutionalized offenders; changes from the last version of the STATIC-99 coding rules; the information required to score the STATIC-99; and important definitions such as “Index Offence”, Category “A” offences versus Category “B” offences, “Index Cluster”, and “Pseudo-recidivism”.

Individual item coding instructions begin at the section entitled “Scoring the Ten Items”. For each of the ten items, the coding instructions begin with three pieces of information: The Basic Principle, Information Required to Score this Item, and The Basic Rule. In most cases, just reading these three small sections will allow you to score that item on the STATIC-99. Should you be unsure of how to score the item you may read further and consider whether any of the special circumstances or exclusions apply to your case. This manual contains much information that is related to specific uses of the STATIC-99 in unusual circumstances and many sections of this manual need only be referred to in exceptional circumstances.

We also suggest that you briefly review the ten appendices as they contain valuable information on adjusting STATIC-99 predictions for time free in the community, a self-test of basic concepts, references, surgical castration, a table for converting raw STATIC-99 scores to risk estimates, the coding forms, a suggested report format for communicating STATIC-99-based risk information, a list of replication studies for the STATIC-99, information on inter-rater reliability and, how to interpret Static -99 scores greater than 6. ..more.. by Andrew Harris, Amy Phenix, R. Karl Hanson, & David Thornton

Chart: The Static 99 table | The scoring system