A NEW METHODOLOGY FOR ASSESSING THE LEVEL OF RISK IN INCARCERATED OFFENDERS

Abstract

A review of the literature relating to the assessment of risk in incarcerated offenders is given. A new methodology for the actuartal assessment of risk based on the prediction of the way in which offending behaviour traits will be manifest in the prison environment is described. A validation of this methodology is described giving a level of accuracy of 65 per cent. A measure of the accuracy, the rated percentage agreement (RPA), is described and the inter-rater reliability of the methodology is investigated. The utility of the instrument in a prison environment is outlined and implications for future refinement and validation are discussed.