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Results for hispanic offenders

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Author: Kane, Michael

Title: Exploring the Role of Responsivity and Assessment with Hispanic and American Indian Offenders

Summary: This report presents findings from an exploration of cultural responsivity in risk and needs assessment in community corrections agencies. As risk and needs assessment becomes more popular in community corrections, more researchers have begun to study issues involving the specific characteristics of offenders and how they interact with assessment and programming to impact outcomes, a concept commonly known as responsivity. In particular, two cultural groups were selected for study: Hispanics and American Indians. Initial plans for the current project involved the development of a new tool or ‘trailer’ for use in assessing Hispanic and American Indian populations. In the early stages of the project, however, the project team and its advisors determined that the creation of a new tool would be premature. Instead, the project focused efforts on: 1) describing current practices in assessing and working with Hispanic and American Indian offenders; 2) determining how well current assessment tools and practices predict recidivism for these offender groups; and 3) suggesting ways to improve tools and practices to make them more culturally competent and responsive. The report that follows will describe assessment and cultural responsivity, describe current practices in culturally responsive assessment, and detail the findings of research activities including data analysis and focus groups. Chapter 1 provides a literature review on the topic of risk assessment and culture. This section will describe the evolution of risk assessment in community corrections, summarize research on evidence-based practices, describe the Hispanic and American Indian populations in the United States and their context in corrections systems nationwide, suggest a model for understanding cultural competency, and describe some popular risk and needs assessment tools. Chapter 2 provides information on a Roundtable of assessment and corrections experts and results from a national survey of probation and parole agencies. The chapter describes the project team’s understanding of the current state of community corrections practice in assessing and supervising American Indian and Hispanic offenders. Chapter 3 summarizes findings from discussions with experts in Hispanic and American Indian culture and focus groups conducted with community corrections staff and Hispanic and American Indian offenders in five sites. Based on this feedback, the project team provides recommendations for improving assessment practices. Focus groups addressed cultural and linguistic barriers in supervision and assessment, specific cultural factors that may impact the scoring of risk and needs assessment, cultural competency during the assessment process, cultural competency training available to officers and supervisors, and suggestions for improving supervision and assessment with Hispanic and American Indian offenders. Chapter 4 presents findings from analysis of assessment and outcome data provided by five community corrections agencies and provides recommendations for improving the effectiveness of assessment tools. Predictive validity analysis was conducted for each site, and a combined analysis examining whether Hispanic and American Indian offenders are scoring differently on risk assessments compared to other offenders, and if agency-level cultural competency practices result in reductions in recidivism.

Details: Boston: Crime and Justice Institute at Community Resources for Justice, 2011. 113p.

Source: Internet Resource: Accessed August 27, 2012 at: https://www.bja.gov/Publications/CRJ_Role_of_Responsivity.pdf

Year: 2011

Country: United States

URL: https://www.bja.gov/Publications/CRJ_Role_of_Responsivity.pdf

Shelf Number: 126118

Keywords:
American Indian Offenders
Community Corrections
Hispanic Offenders
Offender Supervision
Parolees
Probationers
Risk Assessment