Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice: Examining Whether Pragmatic Measures of Neighborhood Characteristics Improve Offender Risk Assessment Tools

• In Event: The Use of Risk Assessment Tools to Inform and Evaluate Correctional Practices and Policies

Abstract

In their theory of offending, Andrews and Bonta (2010) disregard the use of neighborhood-level predictors of offending and claim that individual-level predictors explain all of the meaningful variation in offending. For this reason, research on risk assessment has largely focused on the use of individual-level predictors of offending. As a result, little is known about how neighborhood-level predictors can be used in risk assessment. For instance, neighborhood-level predictors may be best suited as simple additive variables, moderators, or should be excluded because they do not add any meaningful explanatory power beyond individual-level predictors. The purpose of this study was to determine how neighborhood-level indicators of crime are best suited in risk assessment instruments. Analyses were conducted to determine whether the neighborhood domain of the ORAS-CST is best suited as a simple additive domain, a moderator, or neither. Results supported Andrews and Bonta’s (2010) claim that neighborhood-level predictors of individual offending did not provide any predictive power to the ORAS-CST as an additive variable or a moderator. Implications for these findings are discussed in terms of the efficacy of measuring neighborhood-level indicators of risk on risk assessment instruments.

Authors

• Jordan Papp, University of Cincinnati

• Shannon Linning, University of Cincinnati