Patricia Van Voorhis

Women’s Risk Factors and Their Contributions to Existing Risk/Needs Assessment: The Current Status of a Gender-Responsive Supplement

A growing body of scholarship faults existing risk/needs assessment models for neglecting the risk factors most relevant to women offenders. In response, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used gender-neutral risk needs assessments. In six of eight samples studied, subsets of the gender-responsive scales achieved statistically significant contributions to gender-neutral models. Promising results were found for the following: (a) parental stress, family support, self-efficacy, educational assets, housing safety, anger/hostility, and current mental health factors in probation samples; (b) child abuse, anger/hostility, relationship dysfunction, family support, and current mental health factors among prisoners; and (c) adult victimization, anger/hostility, educational assets, and family support among released inmates. The predictive validity of gender-neutral assessments was strong in seven of eight samples studied. However, findings for both gender-neutral and gender-responsive domains suggested different treatment priorities for women from those currently put forward in correctional theory and policy.

The Predictive Validity of a Gender-Responsive Needs Assessment An Exploratory Study

Risk assessment and classification systems for women have been largely derived from male-based systems. As a result, many of the needs unique to women are not formally assessed or treated. Emerging research advocating a gender-responsive approach to the supervision and treatment of women offenders suggests that needs such as abuse, mental health, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and parenting issues are important treatment targets. Although these needs may be highly prevalent among women offenders, they have not been adequately tested to determine their relationships with future offending. In response, the present study sought to understand whether gender-responsive needs contributed as risk factors to poor prison adjustment and community recidivism. Additionally, several types of risk assessment models were explored to determine whether gender-responsive needs enhanced the validities of currently established risk classification systems (i.e., a state’s institutional custody scale and the Level of Service Inventory-Revised). Patterns of results differed across prison and community outcomes, with some gender-responsive needs contributing to more valid risk assessment systems. As a pilot study, the results, although mixed, appear to support continued research on this topic.

Predicting the Prison Misconducts of Women Offenders The Importance of Gender-Responsive Needs

The needs of women offenders may be qualitatively different than the needs of male offenders. The “pathways” and “gender-responsive” perspectives of female offending have recently garnered attention in both practitioner and scholarly arenas. The pathways perspective focuses attention on the co-occurrence and effects of trauma, substance abuse, dysfunctional relationships, and mental illness on female offending, while the gender-responsive perspective also suggests that problems related to parenting, childcare, and self-concept issues are important needs of women offenders. Few studies have examined whether or not these are risk factors for poor prison adjustment. With a sample of 272 incarcerated women offenders in Missouri, we examine how each gender-responsive need is related to six- and twelve-month prison misconducts, and whether the inclusion of such needs to traditional static custody classification items increases the predictive validity of such tools. Results suggest that women offenders do, in fact, display gender-responsive risk factors in prison.

The Georgia Cognitive Skills Experiment A Replication of Reasoning and Rehabilitation

Effects of the Georgia Cognitive Skills Program, a replication of Ross and Fabiano’s Reasoning and Rehabilitation, were examined for 468 parolees randomly assigned to treatment and comparison groups between May 1997 and July 1998. The evaluation tested the effects on arrests/revocations, technical violations, and employment at 9 months and returns to prison at 18 to 30 months. Survival analysis found slightly lower (statistically insignificant) recidivism rates for experimental participants than comparisons. No significant differences were found between experimental and comparison participants on technical violations and employment. Statistically controlling for offender risk factors, program completers had significantly fewer rearrests/revocations and returns to prison and more favorable employment outcomes than comparisons and dropouts. Results were similar for low-risk and medium/high-risk parolees.

Women’s Pathways to Serious and Habitual Crime A Person-Centered Analysis Incorporating Gender Responsive Factors

Qualitative approaches for identifying and characterizing women’s pathways to crime are being augmented by quantitative methods. This study applies quantitative taxonomic methods in disaggregating a large sample of women offenders from a prison population to identify diverse pathway prototypes. An array of gender-responsive and gender-neutral factors and full criminal histories was used to characterize each pathway. Cross-sample and cross-method replication tests demonstrated the stable replication of these pathways. The identified prototypes were related to the prior literature, including Daly’s pathway models, Moffitt’s developmental taxonomy, and several prior taxonomic studies of women’s pathways. Eight reliable pathways were identified that were nested within four broad, superordinate pathway categories. Substantial links to the prior pathways literature were noted, although greater complexity was found to exist in the eight identified pathways.

GENDER-RESPONSIVE LESSONS LEARNED AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS FOR WOMEN IN PRISON A Review

The authors review evidence of gender-responsive factors for women in prisons. Some gender-responsive needs function as risk factors in prison settings and contribute to women’s maladjustment to prison; guided by these findings, the authors outline ways in which prison management, staff members, and programming can better serve female prisoners by being more gender informed. The authors suggest that prisons provide treatment and programming services aimed at reducing women’s criminogenic need factors, use gendered assessments to place women into appropriate interventions and to appropriately plan for women’s successful reentry into the community, and train staff members to be gender responsive.

Values and Evaluation: Assessing Processes and Outcomes of Restorative Justice Programs

Increased interest in the restorative justice programs is accompanied by concern for whether they work andthrough what basic processes. Yet the task of evaluating restorative justice programs is a daunting one because they are so diverse, pursuing unique andmultiple objectives. Restorative justice is guidedby values that emphasize healing andsocial well-being of those affectedby crime. These values must guide program evaluation. The authors explore ways to conceptualize andmeasure program inputs and outputs for the purpose of assessing both processes and outcomes of restorative justice programs.

Measuring prison disciplinary problems: A multiple indicators approach to understanding prison adjustment

This article examines the validity of alternative indicators of prison adjustment. The analysis compares four types of adjustment measures (e.g., official disciplinary citations, staff assessments, inmate survey measures, and inmate interview measures), which provide multiple measures of 1) aggressive behaviors, 2) insubordination, 3) drug and alcohol use, and 4) victimizations. Data were collected in a low-maximum security federal penitentiary for males. The multiple indicators analysis revealed agreement among measures of insubordination. For other measures, staff data tended to agree with official data, and self-report survey measures tended to agree with the interview measures. Bivariate and multivariate analysis showed that the effects of psychological, demographic, and criminal record variables on prison adjustment varied substantially across criterion measures.

Recidivism Among a White-Collar Sample: Does Personality Matter?:

Abstract With the exception of correctional research, the role of personality has been understudied in criminology in general and in the study of white-collar crime in particular. The usefulness of personality has typically been restricted to use as a diagnostic tool in differentiating among offenders for correctional classification purposes. The current research focuses on a sample of white-collar offenders who were convicted in federal courts to explain what role personality plays in explaining their rates of recidivism. Using the Jesness Inventory as a measure of personality, findings reveal that personality type is a significant predictor of offender recidivism with neurotic personality type significantly predicting probability of rearrest.

Psychological Determinants of the Prison Experience

This article applies the technology of psychological classification to explore the effects of personality characteristics on prison adjustments and experiences. Bivariate and multivariate analysis assess the comparative effects of four personality types (committed criminal, neurotic, situational, and character disordered) on official disciplinary infractions, staff ratings of interpersonal behaviors, and self-reports of stress, aggressive behaviors, nonviolent infractions, and victimizations. The effects of other predictors, including age, race, marital status, employment status, prior prison time, prior prison revocations, and sentence length are also considered. Results indicate that inmates who were diagnosed as character disordered and those who had extensive prior prison experiences were more likely than others to have been cited for prison infractions. Young, White inmates and those who had never been revoked during prior sentences were more likely to report victimizing experiences. Inmates most lik...This article applies the technology of psychological classification to explore the effects of personality characteristics on prison adjustments and experiences. Bivariate and multivariate analysis assess the comparative effects of four personality types (committed criminal, neurotic, situational, and character disordered) on official disciplinary infractions, staff ratings of interpersonal behaviors, and self-reports of stress, aggressive behaviors, nonviolent infractions, and victimizations. The effects of other predictors, including age, race, marital status, employment status, prior prison time, prior prison revocations, and sentence length are also considered. Results indicate that inmates who were diagnosed as character disordered and those who had extensive prior prison experiences were more likely than others to have been cited for prison infractions. Young, White inmates and those who had never been revoked during prior sentences were more likely to report victimizing experiences. Inmates most likely to score high on the stress measure were White and neurotic anxious, whereas character-disordered inmates scored atypically low. Finally, older, White, situational inmates were viewed most favorably as staff rated the quality of their interpersonal relationships with other inmates.