Risk Assessment - An Innovation Whose Time May Have Come

• NCJ Number: 83199
• Author(s): P Stageberg
• Date Published: 1982
• Length: 10 pages
• Sale Source: National Institute of Justice/
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: This article is from the National Criminal Justice Association's Justice Bulletin, number 13, May 14, 1982.

Annotation

This article discusses the development, application, and problems of risk assessment systems, with particular attention to a new risk assessment system being tried in Iowa.

Abstract

Several factors should be considered in examining risk assessment systems: the available resources to develop, implement, and maintain such a system, the information available for use in the system, the stage of the criminal justice process in which the system will be used, and the predictability of violent recidivism. While conventional wisdom says that complex risk assessment systems are not necessarily more accurate than simple systems, a system developed in Iowa by Daryl Fischer is challenging this assumption. The system combines 20 variables, more than any other system, in a more complex manner than other systems; uses configural analysis rather than regression and unit weighting; and shows that violent crime by probationers and parolees can be predicted. Risk assessment systems can be used to identify low-risk prison inmates when maximum security prisons are overcrowded but minimum security space is available, to aid in the general study of the criminal justice process and its effectiveness, and to reduce prison populations while simultaneously increasing public protection. Risk assessment devices can also be used in program evaluation. Risk assessment should be used to augment the judgement of criminal justice professionals in helping them to predict violent recidivisms and recidivism in general. No references are cited.