Treatment Dosage and the Risk Principle: A Refinement and Extension

Abstract

The risk principle of effective intervention suggests that the intensity of treatment dosage should match the risk level of the individual offender. The current research uses a sample of over 900 male adults who completed a community-based correctional facility to examine how offender risk level moderates the relationship between treatment dosage and recidivism. The results suggest that 1) risk moderates the relationship between treatment dosage and recidivism, 2) the relationship between treatment dosage and recidivism is not linear, and 3) the greatest reductions in recidivism were seen in medium/high risk cases that received between 200 and 249 hours of treatment.