Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) Profiles of Offenders and Their Relationship to Institutional Misconduct and Risk of Reconviction

Abstract

This article investigates whether particular scales of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) are associated with institutional misconduct and risk of reconviction among 268 offenders in a therapeutic community prison. A moderate positive correlation was found between the Antisocial Behavior subscale of the PAI and general institutional misconduct. Moderate positive correlations were also found between the Antisocial Features, Aggression, and Drug Problems scales and risk of reconviction as measured by the Offender Group Reconviction Scale (Francis, Soothill, & Humphries, 2007; Taylor, 1999). In addition, receiver operating characteristic analyses showed that certain PAI cut scores had utility in identifying prisoners who had engaged in institutional misconduct and who posed a high risk of reconviction.