Factorial analysis of risk matrix 2000 on an Italian sample of sexual offenders

In order to assess the internal structure of Risk Matrix 2000 in an Italian sample of 308 adult males convicted for sex abuse, a principal component analysis with Promax rotation was performed. The results identified a structure with three factors that explained 53.8% of the total variance: the first factor concerned items referred to the criminal career of the offender; the second factor concerned the age of onset in committing crimes; the third factor was more strictly related to the offenders' attitude towards the sex crime/s, and reflects the aggravating items of the S scale. These results allows us to have the first validated tool on an Italian sample for assessing the level of risk for recidivism.