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Abstract
The predictive validity of the Violence Risk Scale (VRS) has been demonstrated in a number of institutionalised offender samples but not in a community sample. The present study assessed prospectively, in a seven-year follow-up, the validity of the VRS ratings in predicting recidivism in a sample of 60 federal offenders residing in the community after they were released under conditional orders. Six recidivism outcomes were used: any and violent reconvictions, days until any and violent reconvictions, frequency and severity of any new reconvictions. Pearson correlations, Receiver Operating Characteristic and survival analyses were used, among others, to assess the predictive validity of VRS ratings. The VRS ratings significantly predicted all six recidivism outcomes. The results also suggest that release decision makers correctly identified offenders with lower than average risk and recidivism rate for release. However, for release decision making, it is suggested that more attention should be paid to the results of risk assessments using validated structured risk assessment tools.
Acknowledgements
We thank Terri Simon and D. Gu for their assistance. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Institute of Mental Health, Correctional Service of Canada or the University of Saskatchewan).
Notes
1. Day parole refers to the granting of parole by the Canadian National Parole Board to the offender for a period of leave during the day but returning to reside at a designated housing unit for the balance of the day. Full parole has the same conditions as day parole other than the period of leave is for 24 hours 7 days a week with no requirement to return to a designated housing unit. Other conditions of parole vary and may include reporting requirements to parole officers and abstinence from intoxicants etc. Statutory Release requires federally sentenced offenders to serve the final third of their sentence in the community, under supervision and under conditions of release similar to those imposed on offenders released on full parole. Statutory release could be withheld from certain offenders deemed too risky for release.
2. An exact number of participants invited to participate could not be determined as the invitation was done through contact with parole officers who did not provide exact numbers to the researchers.
3. Violent criminal convictions are defined as crimes against the person such as homicide-related offences, kidnapping, arson, forcible confinement, wounding, robbery, various assault offences and any sexual assault other than non-contact sexual crimes such as exhibitionism and voyeurism.
4. To provide a validity check on the severity measure, the sentence length of all those convicted of a violent offence was reviewed. Everyone convicted of a violent crime was sentenced to incarceration. One participant was sentenced to seven days of incarceration, the rest of the sentences for violent offences ranged from 91 to 32, 941 days with a mean of 3425 days of incarceration.
5. The term frequency of new convictions refers to the mean number of convictions per year of follow-up throughout the paper.
6. The female offender was included in the study as the analyses indicated only minor differences with the female offender excluded from the analyses. The maximum change in correlations was .02. The significance of the correlations and the survival analyses did not change from significant to non-significant or vice versa.
7. Index sentence length given in the normative study (Wong & Gordon, 2006).
8. Square bracketed values in the Results section are taken from the original normative sample (Wong & Gordon, 2006) for the purpose of comparison.
9. Given the large difference in sample size, results should be interpreted with caution.