Risk Assessment and Reassessment

• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Author: Brenda Vose
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12196
• Date: 01 May 2016

POLICY ESSAY

OFFENDER RISK CHARACTERISTICS

Risk Assessment and Reassessment

An Evidence-Based Approach to Offender Management

Brenda Vose

University of North Florida

Supervising the offender population is a daunting task for criminal justice practition-

ers. There are simply too many offenders and too few resources. Policy makers and

practitioners are acutely aware of the estimated $48.5 billion (Kyckelhahn, 2012) in

costs associated with the management of state-level offenders in 2010 and are looking for

more effective and economical ways to manage an offender population that has ballooned

to nearly 6,899,000 adults in the United States (Glaze and Kaeble, 2014). To this end, we

have observed an increasing demand for the development, implementation, and evaluation

of evidence-based correctional practices—that is, practices based on theory and empirical

support (Latessa, Cullen, and Gendreau, 2002; MacKenzie, 2001).

Use of empirically validated risk assessment instruments is among the evidence-based

practices employed by those responsible for managing the offender population. The results

from the risk assessment instruments are used to inform practitioner decision making about

offender housing, assignment of offenders to treatment programs, predicting likelihood of

recidivism, and determining an offender’s readiness for release from supervision (Andrews

and Bonta, 1995). The emphasis on evidence-based correctional practices has prompted

agencies to revisit their current assessment practices in search of modifications that may

improve their ability to predict offender recidivism and allocate criminal justice resources.

Specifically,agencies are moving away from the practice of administering a single risk/needs

assessment to offenders and instead implementing an approach where an offender is admin-

istered an initial assessment and then reassessed at a later date to monitor changes in the

offender’s risk/needs. This policy essay will discuss the importance of the study by Thomas

Cohen, Christopher Lowenkamp, and Scott VanBenschoten (2016, this issue); provide

suggestions for the next steps in research; and discuss the policy implications of adopting

an assessment and reassessment approach to offender management.

Direct correspondence to Brenda Vose, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of North

Florida, 1 UNF Drive, Jacksonville, FL 32224 (e-mail: brenda.vose@unf.edu).

DOI:10.1111/1745-9133.12196 C2016 American Society of Criminology 301

Criminology & Public Policy rVolume 15 rIssue 2