He spent decades managing the human abyss: Frank Urbaniok abandons management positions

Frank Urbaniok has often provided information to the media – in a way that is understandable even to lay people. (Image: Walter Bieri / Keystone)

No, he is not fascinated by the evil, said Frank Urbaniok one day. For decades, he has been confronted with human abysses, with violent and sexual offenders. For example, he produced a report on the woman who killed her children in Flaach at Christmas 2015. For two decades he headed the psychiatric and psychological service of the Prison Service of Zurich, which is responsible for the treatment and Offender Risk Assessment. Now the 55-year-old has to give up work, as reported yesterday the canton of Zurich. Urbaniok is suffering from cancer and has already undergone several operations.

In public, the German-Swiss dual citizen is known for his many media appearances. The psychiatrist, the assessor and the court therapist often provided information in a way that was understandable to lay people.

Eminent, but not undisputed

Urbaniok put the risk of relapse at the center of his work. He has developed a tool to assess the danger and risk of relapse of offenders: the computer program Fotres, which provides a risk analysis based on hundreds of criteria. The method is controversial, for example, the Zurich psychiatrist Mario Gmür criticized them several times.

Urbaniok has also put new emphasis on therapy. Many therapists were previously in the opinion, "you have to talk to violent and sexual offenders about their mother," he once said in an interview. "I used my team to talk to criminals about their crime." Urbaniok also pointed out that there are dangerous offenders who can not be treated – and against whom society must be protected. This earned him the reputation of a hardliner.

Last year, Urbaniok received an award for the work of his life from the Swiss Society of Forensic Psychology. President Leena Hässig-Ramming said in her eulogy that Urbaniok "has shaped forensic psychiatry in Switzerland" over the past twenty years as almost anyone else before him ".

C & # 39; is to his credit that he has developed concepts to grasp the prognosis of risk and to exploit the work between therapists and the justice system, said Hässig-Ramming yesterday. "His even greater merit, however, is the acknowledgment of the author's work. "Previously, the therapeutic work with the authors had been disapproved, Urbaniok contributed to a turning point here: he was able to explain that the work of the authors is important to prevent new acts – and therefore more casualties.