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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 4:02 am
Time: 4:02 am
Results for risk and needs assessment
3 results foundAuthor: James, Nathan Title: Risk and Needs Assessment in the Criminal Justice System Summary: The number of people incarcerated in the United States has increased significantly over the past three decades from approximately 419,000 inmates in 1983 to approximately 1.5 million inmates in 2013. Concerns about both the economic and social consequences of the country's growing reliance on incarceration have led to calls for reforms to the nation's criminal justice system. There have been legislative proposals to implement a risk and needs assessment system in federal prisons. The system would be used to place inmates in rehabilitative programs. Under the proposed system some inmates would be eligible to earn additional time credits for participating in rehabilitative programs that reduce their risk of recidivism. Such credits would allow inmates to be placed on prerelease custody earlier. The proposed system would exclude inmates convicted of certain offenses from being eligible to earn additional time credits. Risk and needs assessment instruments typically consist of a series of items used to collect data on behaviors and attitudes that research indicates are related to the risk of recidivism. Generally, inmates are classified as being high, moderate, or low risk. Assessment instruments are comprised of static and dynamic risk factors. Static risk factors do not change, while dynamic risk factors can either change on their own or be changed through an intervention. In general, research suggests that the most commonly used assessment instruments can, with a moderate level of accuracy, predict who is at risk for violent recidivism. It also suggests that no single instrument is superior to any other when it comes to predictive validity. The Risk-Needs-Responsivity (RNR) model has become the dominant paradigm in risk and needs assessment. The risk principle states that high-risk offenders need to be placed in programs that provide more intensive treatment and services while low-risk offenders should receive minimal or even no intervention. The need principle states that effective treatment should focus on addressing needs that contribute to criminal behavior. The responsivity principle states that rehabilitative programming should be delivered in a style and mode that is consistent with the ability and learning style of the offender. However, the wide-scale adoption of risk and needs assessment in the criminal justice system is not without controversy. Several critiques have been raised against the use of risk and needs assessment, including that it could have discriminatory effects because some risk factors are correlated with race; that it uses group base rates for recidivism to make determinations about an individual's propensity for re-offending; and that risk and needs assessment are two distinct procedures and should be conducted separately. There are several issues policymakers might contemplate should Congress choose to consider legislation to implement a risk and needs assessment system in federal prisons, including the following: - Should risk and needs assessment be used in federal prisons? - Should certain inmates be excluded from earning additional time credits? - Should risk assessment be incorporated into sentencing? - Should there be a decreased focus on punishing offenders? Details: Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2015. 23p. Source: Internet Resource: R44087: Accessed July 8, 2015 at: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44087.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44087.pdf Shelf Number: 135962 Keywords: Correctional ProgramsInmatesPrisoner RehabilitationPrisonersRisk and Needs AssessmentRisk Assessment |
Author: Concert Group Logistics (CGL) Title: Study of Operations of the Florida Department of Corrections Summary: The Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability (OPPAGA), a joint entity of the Florida Legislature (Legislature), solicited competitive bids in order to award a contract with an independent consultant for a Study of Operations of the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC). The goal of the solicitation process was to fulfill the requirements of Chapter 2015-232, Laws of Florida (also known as Senate Bill 2500-A) passed during a special 2015 session of the Legislature. The bill states: "From the funds in Specific Appropriations 2667 and 2668, $300,000 in nonrecurring general revenue funds is appropriated for the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability to contract with an independent consultant to study the operations of the Department of Corrections with regard to the incarceration of inmates. The contractor shall identify both positive and negative aspects of the department's operations and shall prepare a report of its findings, including recommendations for improvements. The report shall be submitted to the Governor, the President of the Senate, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives no later than December 1, 2015." The solicitation sought a consultant to conduct an immediate, thorough, and detailed study of the operations of the FDC with reference to applicable best management practices in the corrections industry. Consistent with the time requirements contained in Senate Bill 2500-A, the final report for this study was required to be submitted no later than November 30, 2015. Details: Tallahassee, FL: Florida Legislature, Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability, 2015. 178p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 8, 2016 at: http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/MonitorDocs/Reports/pdf/15-FDC.pdf Year: 2015 Country: United States URL: http://www.oppaga.state.fl.us/MonitorDocs/Reports/pdf/15-FDC.pdf Shelf Number: 137806 Keywords: Correctional AdministrationCorrectional ProgramsCorrections OfficersPrison GuardsPrisonsRisk and Needs Assessment |
Author: Hanson, R. Karl Title: A Five-Level Risk and Needs System: Maximizing Assessment Results in Corrections through the Development of a Common Language Summary: Risk and needs assessments are now routinely used in correctional systems in the United States to estimate a person's likelihood of recidivism and provide direction concerning appropriate correctional interventions. Specifically, they inform sentencing, determine the need for and nature of rehabilitation programs, inform decisions concerning conditional release, and allow community supervision officers to tailor conditions to a person's specific strengths, skill deficits, and reintegration challenges. In short, risk and needs assessments provide a roadmap for effective correctional rehabilitation initiatives. When properly understood and implemented, they can help correctional organizations to provide the types and dosages of services that are empirically related to reductions in reoffending. Despite considerable advances in risk and needs assessment, however, the widespread use of a variety of risk and needs assessment instruments has created new challenges. Foremost, how do we compare the results of assessments conducted with different instruments? Although all of these instruments are trying to measure risk and needs, each instrument is unique in that it may comprise varying factors and weight those factors differently from other instruments. Furthermore, the field has not set standards or specifications about the terminology used to describe risk and needs categories across all of these instruments. Although some risk and needs instruments use three nominal risk and needs categories (low, moderate, high), others use four nominal categories (low, low-moderate, moderate-high, high), and still others use five (low, low-moderate, moderate, moderate-high, high). Some instruments use different terms entirely (e.g., poor, fair, good, very good). Complicating matters further, there are no standard definitions of these nominal risk and needs categories, so "low risk," for example, might have different definitions from one instrument to the next. As such, the field of assessment and risk research struggles with perhaps its most significant obstacle: the absence of a precise, standardized language to communicate about risk. To further illustrate this problem, researchers compared risk-level definitions among five assessment measures and found that only 3 percent of the people assessed were identified as high risk across all five instruments and only 4 percent of the people were identified as low risk by all five measures. This means that the same person can be described by different categories across different assessment instruments, or people in the same category can be described differently across different assessment instruments. Beyond the lack of standard definitions of risk and needs categories, there is no consensus about what various labels mean with regard to the probability of reoffending or the specific profile of needs in each risk level. This lack of consensus occurs not just across different instruments, but also across and within jurisdictions that use the same instrument but in different ways. Details: New York: Justice Center, Council of State Governments, 2017. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed January 30, 2017 at: https://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/A-Five-Level-Risk-and-Needs-System_Report.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/A-Five-Level-Risk-and-Needs-System_Report.pdf Shelf Number: 144876 Keywords: Prisoner ClassificationRisk and Needs AssessmentRisk Assessment |