Prediction of Security Level Change Within a Prison Context

• In Event: Carceral Surveillance and Population Monitoring: Tools, Tensions, and Impacts

Abstract

The determination of security level classification for incarcerated persons has important ramifications for institutional safety, incarcerated person movement and privileges, the allocation of treatment and programming, and prisoner reentry. The recently enhanced security reclassification system in Ohio state prisons is an agency collaboration that uses an operational process combining an institutional misconduct weighting scheme based on line staff judgement and a prison violence risk instrument designed by agency researchers. While this new reclassification framework incorporates a wide range of predictors including both negative and pro-social factors and an information technology process that minimizes system error, we know little of the specific behaviors and procedural factors that lead to classification decision-making. The goal of this study is to establish the predictors of security increase and security downgrade trajectories under this new classification process. Results will help inform potential security instrument modifications, staff training efforts, and quality assurance processes to ensure the proper allocation of security levels for incarcerated persons.

Authors

• Brian R. Kowalski, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction

• Brian D. Martin, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction