Deconstructing the risk principle

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00777.x
• Published date: 01 November 2011
• Date: 01 November 2011
• Author: William D. Bales,Gerald G. Gaes

POLICY ESSAY

TRANSITIONAL JOBS PROGRAM

Deconstructing the risk principle

Addressing some remaining questions

Gerald G. Gaes

William D. Bales

Florida State University

The article by Zweig, Yahner, and Redcross (2011, this issue) is one of the

strongest tests to date of the risk principle. Offenders were randomly assigned

to a transitional jobs program. The risk of reoffending levels—high, medium,

and low—were based on exogenous factors that were in place prior to the intervention. The

results showed that the transitional job program reduced recidivism relativeto control group

participants for the high-risk offenders but not for the low- or medium-risk offenders. One

of the few ways that Zweig et al. could have improved on their design would have been

to use preexisting risk levels as a blocking variable and to assign offenders randomly to the

intervention and control groups within each of these risk levels.

In this policy essay, we accept the premise of the risk principle, but we pose certain

questions that should be addressed by criminologists to further our understanding of

the mechanisms at work, and to enhance its utility as a public policy tool. We start by

deconstructing elements of the risk principle, acknowledging the original statement by

Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge (1990). We also give credit to expositions by Lowenkamp and

Latessa (2004) and Lowenkamp,Latessa, and Holsinger (2006) in expressing the relationship

among risk, supervision, and program intensity.

Risk Principle Dened

Offenders are distributed along a dimension of risk to commit crimes based on some

scalar assessment of that dimension. Based on the risk scale, the risk principle suggests the

following actions, especially with regard to community supervision:

1. The higher the risk level, the higher the level of community supervision.

2. The higher the risk level, the greater the required level of rehabilitative intervention.

Direct correspondence to William D. Bales, College of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Florida State University,

634 W. Call Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306–1127 (e-mail: wbales@fsu.edu).

DOI:10.1111/j.1745-9133.2011.00777.x C2011 American Society of Criminology 979

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 10 rIssue4