An Evaluation of the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory in an Australian Community Corrections Environment

1. This paper was based on a conference presentation, titled “Prediction of recidivism in a Tasmanian population: Evaluation of the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory’, which outlined the preliminary findings to this work. The presentation was given at the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychology, Psychiatry and Law (ANZAPPL) 32nd Annual Congress, November 2012, Melbourne.

Abstract

Risk assessments are crucial in aiding criminal justice practitioners because they provide a standardized instrument that aims to identify risk factors that may influence whether an individual will reoffend. This helps to tailor an offender's case-management program to ensure offenders are accessing the appropriate services and interventions and to keep the community safe from future reoffending. The aim of the current study was to investigate the validity and predictive utility of the LS/CMI in a sample of Australian offenders. The results indicate that the LS/CMI has a weak discriminative ability for non-Indigenous males. However, it predicts recidivism in non-Indigenous female offenders at an accuracy level no greater than chance. This finding should be interpreted with caution due to the small female offender sample size. These findings for non-Indigenous offenders are consistent with previous Australian and international research. It also highlights the importance of validating risk assessments for specific populations.

Key words:

• criminal justice
• Level of Service/Case Management Inventory
• recidivism
• reoffending

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Tasmanian Department of Justice and Community Corrections for approval to conduct this research and for partial funding of Ms Heidi Gordon's PhD Scholarship undertaken at the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies at the University of Tasmania. We specifically thank Ms Martha Robson for her invaluable support and assistance. The opinions expressed in this article reflect those of the authors and this research does not necessarily reflect the policies or views of the Tasmania Department of Justice. We kindly thank Dr Caroline Spiranovic for her statistical advice and comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Note

Notes

1. This paper was based on a conference presentation, titled “Prediction of recidivism in a Tasmanian population: Evaluation of the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory’, which outlined the preliminary findings to this work. The presentation was given at the Australian and New Zealand Association of Psychology, Psychiatry and Law (ANZAPPL) 32nd Annual Congress, November 2012, Melbourne.