The article claims that, because most actuarial tools are based on a main effects regression approach, they do not adequately reflect the contingent nature of the clinical assessment processes. To enhance the use of actuarial violence risk assessment tools, it proposes a classification tree approach. In addition, it suggests that the use of two decision thresholds for identifying high- and low-risk cases--instead of the standard single threshold--may further enhance the use of actuarial tools to make dichotomous risk classification decisions. The results of this study reflect relatively short-term predictions of community violence among patients discharged from acute hospital stays. Statements of relative risk are in comparison to other discharged psychiatric patients and not in comparison to a general community sample. The extent to which these results will generalize to other settings, other patient populations or longer periods of observation is not known. Notes, tables, figures, appendixes, references