Criminogenic Risk Research Articles

Female prisoners with borderline personality disorder: some promising treatment developments

The over-representation of female prisoners with borderline personality disorder (BPD) is an area of concern for HM Prison Service. Pilot programmes of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) were undertaken for the first time in three British prisons for women diagnosed with BPD. Standard year-long programmes were piloted in two closed training prisons. Three short-format programmes were undertaken in a local allocation prison. Evaluation measures included psychometric tests, behavioural data, and interviews with participants and key personnel. Sixteen of the 30 women who embarked on the programmes completed them, though five dropouts were transferred or released, leaving a voluntary attrition rate of 33%. Fourteen completed all measures. A waiting-list control group of eight participants was also set up. Five completed all measures. The vast majority of completers showed overall improvements in psychometric data often reaching statistical significance, and with notable effect sizes, while there was no significant overall change in the control group (though improvements were seen). A down-turn in overall self-harm was also seen. Results are tentative at this stage because of the small sample size. However, despite the numerous challenges associated with implementation, outcomes showed real promise for delivering DBT in a prison setting, and its efficacy in reducing criminogenic risk and improving the manageability and quality of life for this highly problematic group. Lessons learned for future implementation in correctional settings are discussed.

Treating offending children: What works?

Purpose. There is little evidence on the effectiveness of interventions with offending children and juveniles, either in Europe or North America. We present the evaluation findings of an innovative intervention and relate these to the existing evidence base for young offenders and to the more extensive literature on older offenders.Methods. Using an established risk predictor, The Level of Service Inventory–Revised (LSI‐R; Andrews & Bonta, 1995), we measured the criminogenic risks and needs of the intervention group and a non‐intervention group of child and juvenile offenders at 6‐monthly intervals. Local police charges data were also collected for both groups as an indicator of offending behaviour.Results. Over the first 30 months of the project, a statistically significant drop was seen in the LSI‐R scores of the project participants, with favourable effect sizes. Effect sizes improved markedly with longer‐term intervention. There were also strong indications that the level of offending behaviour had decreased during the intervention. The comparison group showed no change in risks, needs or offending rate.Conclusions. We suggest this study provides an important contribution to the evidence base of what works with child and juvenile offenders and we suggest that an increased focus on understanding effective intervention with very young offenders is required.

Actuarial Risk Assessment and Human Rights: A Commentary

Introduction In recent years, criminal justice professionals have increasingly endorsed actuarial measures of risk as the most reliable predictive instruments for decision making (Ericson and Haggerty 1997; Hannah-Moffat and Shaw 2001). Andrews and Bonta define the actuarial approach as involving criteria for decisions that are validated by (2003: 234). In a recent review of best practices in risk assessment, Bonta (2002) indicates that the first guideline for psychologists when assessing risk is to rely on empirically based actuarial risk instruments. The performance of judgement (i.e., determination of risk based on professional opinion and expertise) compared to actuarial risk assessment in predicting criminal behaviour is by now well documented (Bonta, Law, and Hanson 1998; Grove and Meehl 1996; Grove, Zald, Lebow, Snitz, and Nelson 2000). Some have even argued that failure to conduct actuarial risk assessment or consider its results is irrational, unscientific, unethical, and unprofessional (Grove and Meehl 1996; Quinsey, Harris, Rice, and Cormier 1998). In the criminal justice context, judgement frequently fails to consider criminogenic risk factors (i.e., factors that research has found to be associated with criminality) and too often relies on characteristics not associated with criminality and recidivism, resulting in or unsubstantiated decisions (both false positives and false negatives). Grove and Meehl go so far as to argue that the clinical brain is a poor substitute for an explicit regression equation or actuarial table. Humans simply cannot assign optimal to variables, and they are not consistently applying their own weights (1996: 315). They further suggest that judgement is unduly vulnerable to personal prejudice and bias. The movement toward using actuarial risk assessment has permeated the entire criminal justice system. Criminal justice professionals are increasingly familiar with the long list of high-performing actuarial risk assessment instruments (Bonta 2002) with impressive acronyms, such as PCL-R, LSI-R, VRAG, HRC-20, SONAR, RRASOR, and STATIC-99. A few provincial jurisdictions require probation officers to include actuarial risk assessment results in pre-sentence reports (Cole and Angus 2003). Judges frequently rely on actuarial risk assessments when handing down their sentences, and a high level of risk invariably results in harsher dispositions (Zinger and Forth 1998). Correctional authorities routinely depend on actuarial risk assessment to make decisions on security classification, institutional placement, programming, and conditional release (e.g., temporary absences, work releases). Parole boards typically require such assessments before rendering decisions with respect to parole or other forms of conditional release. For many psychologists working in criminal justice, and a few psychiatrists, actuarial risk instruments are a part of the daily work routine and preoccupations (Bonta 2002). Academic journals are filled with articles on the validity of specialized scales that attempt to predict various forms of recidivism (general, violent, sexual recidivism). More telling, perhaps, is the literature comparing the performance of different instruments. The debates surrounding scale performance are frequently heated (Gendreau, Goggin, and Smith 2002; Hemphill and Hare 2004). Those who have developed instruments that outperform their competitors also appear to feel a certain sense of pride and accomplishment (Pratt 2001). Moreover, developing an instrument may result in considerable profit and prestige and, in some rare instances, even celebrity (see The Corporation [Abbott and Achbar 2003], featuring Dr Hare's PCL-R [1991]). In addition to substantial royalties, some instruments may generate further revenues by requiring mandatory specialized training in their use, application, and interpretation (e. …

Signal crimes and signal disorders: notes on deviance as communicative action.

In this paper a 'signal crimes' perspective is outlined in an effort to unpack the relationships between experiences of crime and disorder, and perceptions of criminogenic risk. Grounded in symbolic interactionist sociology, and developing a social semiotic understanding of risk perception, it is a perspective that focuses upon processes of social reaction and the ways in which people interpret and define threats to their security. It is proposed that people interpret the occurrence of certain incidents as 'warning signals' about the levels of risk to which they are either actually or potentially exposed. These signals tend to take the form of signal crimes and/or signal disorders and are important in terms of how social space is symbolically constructed.

Review Essay: Making Criminology Good: A Response to Shadd Maruna

This article provides a critical engagement with Shadd Maruna's book Making Good. The author illuminates why Making Good is a truly radical contribution to the study of crime; a book that underlines the important contribution psychology can make to the study of (ex)offenders' lives. However, the author argues that in focusing our attention on the psychosocial, Maruna raises – but does not adequately answer – the question of how to conceptualise the subjectivities of criminological research subjects. The article concludes by arguing that a complex, dynamic understanding of the relationship between the social and psychological is needed to account for the capacity of some offenders to desist from crime despite the overwhelming social forces that mitigate against this kind of change.

Cognitive ability and delinquent behavior among inner-city youth: a life-course analysis of main, mediating, and interaction effects.

Drawing on the emerging life-course paradigm in criminological theory, this study examines the relationship between cognitive ability and delinquent behavior within a sample of inner-city youth. The results indicate that net of statistical controls, cognitive ability maintains a robust inverse relationship with the likelihood of the onset of delinquency, the early onset of delinquency, and the persistence of delinquency during the 18-year period covered by the dataset. Furthermore, cognitive ability mediates the effect of concentrated disadvantage on both the onset and early onset of delinquency. Overall, the results of this study suggest that cognitive ability is an important criminogenic risk factor that has important implications for both correctional interventions and the continued development of structural and multilevel theories of crime.

Ethnicity, gender, and the Level of Service Inventory-Revised

Offender assessment and classification is becoming an increasingly important part of correctional supervision and intervention. Over the last several decades, several different methods and “generations” of offender classification have emerged. Of most value appear to be third-generation, actuarial, dynamic risk/need assessments. With any new correctional strategy, however, there is a need to investigate the use of these risk/need assessments on offender subgroups in order to inform issues, such as reliability and prevalence of criminogenic risk factors. The present study utilized data that were gathered using the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R). Results and comparisons of these assessments were investigated and presented for Native American and non-Native American offenders as well as male and female offenders. Discussion of the results, implications, and recommendations for further research are presented.

Dosage of treatment to sexual offenders: are we overprescribing?

A sample of 337 offenders who received treatment in a variety of sex offender treatment programs in the Ontario region of Correctional Service Canada between 1993 and 1998 were divided based on the highest intensity sex offender programming that they received (low, moderate, and high). The three groups were compared with reference to a variety of actuarial risk assessment measures, criminogenic factors, and the number and type of treatment programs completed. It was hypothesized that the high-intensity group would have more criminogenic risk factors, higher actuarial scores, and participate in more treatment programs than both the moderate- and low-intensity groups. The results indicate that in general, the hypotheses were supported. Nonetheless, the results suggest that the low-intensity group may be receiving too much sex offender-specific treatment.

Literacy, Numeracy and Non-Verbal Reasoning Skills of South Australian Young Offenders

This study attempts to quantify the basic literacy and numeracy skill levels of detained young offenders in Australia. Subjects were 561 youths in secure care in South Australia. Comparative data were available for 136 local high school students. Compared with student peers, the young offenders performed poorly on measures of reading, spelling, mental arithmetic, analogue time telling and non-verbal reasoning. Among the sub-groups, male Aboriginal offenders had the highest proportion of low achievers. This could be a factor in their overrepresentation in the criminal justice system. Their results suggest that environmental variables play a significant role in their underachievement. Reasons for the young offenders' poorer performance are explored and the possible protective role of basic skills against criminogenic risks is considered. It is concluded that the broad range of offender needs should be met by a broad variety of programs, including remedial education.

Crime and the Bell Curve: Lessons from Intelligent Criminology

In their best-selling book, The Bell Curve, Herrnstein and Murray argue that IQ is a powerful predictor of a range of social ills including crime. They use this “scientific reality” to oppose social welfare policies and, in particular, to justify the punishment of offenders. By reanalyzing the data used in The Bell Curve and by reviewing existing meta-analyses assessing the relative importance of criminogenic risk factors, the present authors show empirically that Herrnstein and Murray's claims regarding IQ and crime are misleading. The authors conclude that Herrnstein and Murray's crime control agenda is based on ideology, not on intelligent criminology.

Drs. Brown and Anderson and Dr. Sanders Reply

Drs. Brown and Anderson and Dr. Sanders Reply