Criminal Justice and Behavior

This meta-analysis was conducted to examine predictors of two indicators of inmates’ adjustment to prison life: institutional infractions and health care utilization. Focusing on male prisoners, the final data set consisted of 90 studies and produced 1,815 correlations. Predictors were grouped into personal and contextual characteristics. Regarding institutional infractions, the strongest personal predictors were prior prison misconduct, aggressiveness, impulsiveness, antisocial traits, institutional risk, and younger age. At the contextual level, higher infraction rates were observed in prisons with more gang activity, and in prisons housing more inmates and a larger proportion of maximum security inmates. Major correlates of health care utilization were prior mental health problems, older age, and physical symptoms. Moderator effects were observed for prison sample size, sample selection, length of follow-up, geographic location, and type of analysis. These findings may help to improve prison classification procedures to optimize prisoners’ management and treatment.

Since the 1980s, increasing numbers of individuals entering into the criminal justice system have caused criminal justice professionals and researchers concern about the phenomenon of individuals continually returning to the system. It is possible that identifying and addressing needs in the pretrial stage of the criminal justice system could interrupt this cycle and contribute to pretrial success. Furthermore, attention to gender-responsive needs at this stage of the criminal justice process may prove beneficial for female pretrial defendants. This study contributes to both the pretrial and gender-responsive literature by investigating whether pretrial needs are predictive of pretrial outcomes and if there are gender differences in these needs. Results indicate that many of the examined needs are risk factors for pretrial failure, there are gender differences in the composition of several of these needs, and gender-responsive pretrial needs are important to predicting pretrial outcomes.

The present investigation examined the predictive validity of the Level of Service/Risk–Need–Responsivity (LS/RNR) instrument for general and violent recidivism in a sample of 138 community-supervised adult mentally disordered offenders. The General Risk/Need section was strongly predictive of general recidivism, whereas the Specific Risk/Need section most strongly predicted violent recidivism. Among males, the General Risk/Need section produced a large effect size for general recidivism, whereas general and violent outcomes for females were best predicted by the Specific Risk/Need section. Across diagnostic subgroups, the General and Specific Risk/Need sections predicted general but not violent recidivism; however, many subgroups were small, highlighting a need for replication research with larger samples. The Other Client Issues and Special Responsivity Considerations sections did not significantly inform recidivism prediction. Broadly interpreted, the overall pattern supports the LS/RNR instrument as valid for use with mentally disordered offenders.

The Risk–Need–Responsivity (RNR) framework for working with offenders has been well validated. Factors that contribute to reoffending within adult and youth forensic populations have been identified, including antisocial attitudes, but less is known about the measurement of this construct in youth. Thus, in the present study, the reliability and validity of criminal attitudes measures were examined in a sample of justice-involved male youth (N = 291). Two measures widely used with adult offenders were included in the present study: the Pride in Delinquency Scale (PID) and the Criminal Sentiments Scale–Modified (CSS-M). Both measures were found to be reliable and valid, and of importance, useful in the prediction of reoffending behavior (area under the curve = .70 and .69 respectively). These findings further support the use of the RNR framework in general with youthful offenders, and more specifically, the use of criminal attitudes measures with youth.

The current study used crime scene analysis (CSA) to identify the psychological characteristics of child molesters and examined the contribution of these behavioral themes for sexual offender risk assessment. CSA was conducted on a sample of 424 cases of child sexual abuse in Berlin (Germany) using non-metric Multi-Dimensional Scaling. The analysis revealed the behavioral themes of fixation, regression (sexualization), criminality, and (sexualized) aggression, consistent with previous theories and empirical research in child molestation. The construct validity of the four themes was demonstrated through correlational analyses with known sexual offending measures, ratings of offender motivation, and criminal histories. The themes of fixation and (sexualized) aggression were significant predictors of sexual recidivism and added incrementally to the Static-99 for the prediction of sexual recidivism. The results indicate that crime scene information can inform the assessment of child molesters’ risk-relevant propensities and improve the prediction of sexual recidivism.