A Multilevel Longitudinal Approach to Assessing Change in Dynamic Risk and Needs Factors

• In Event: Emerging Scholars on Emerging Adulthood: Explicating the Relationship between Social Environment and Offending

Abstract

Criminological theories of change are encoded in contemporary risk assessment tools via the inclusion of dynamic risk/need factors. Yet, the field of risk assessment has largely concentrated on whether such factors predict reoffending. Far less work has examined if risk/needs factors actually change over the life-course and what helps produce such change. Addressing this gap is important as risk-needs assessments inform decision-making at multiple points of the justice process (e.g., sentencing, custodial and community monitoring, treatment). Understanding whether and how dynamic risk/needs change can help guide an individual’s correctional planning while also addressing questions from desistance theories regarding for whom turning points occur and how change relates to patterns of desistance over the life-course. Using data from British Columbia corrections’ Community Risk-Needs Assessment tool, this study explored change in dynamic risk-needs items for a high-risk sample obtained through the Incarcerated Serious and Violent Young Offenders Study. Individual risk-needs items (e.g., substance misuse, housing instability, employment) were assessed using multilevel statistical modelling to determine if and how these items changed. The findings are discussed in light of the risk-needs-responsivity model that is embedded in correctional practices and developmental theories regarding the normative nature of turning points.

Authors

• Kristina Kocsis, Simon Fraser University

• Evan McCuish, Simon Fraser University