Advances in offender assessment and rehabilitation: Contributions of the risk–needs–responsivity approach

Abstract

The risk–needs–responsivity model of offender assessment and rehabilitation has received considerable research attention and has been a leading factor in the offender-rehabilitation movement. This article reviews the risk–needs–responsivity model and the assessment and intervention implications that flow from the model. Some attention is also paid to the “good lives model” and its general fit with the principles of risk, needs, and responsivity. The future directions of the risk–needs–responsivity model are also discussed and a renewed conceptualisation of the principle of responsivity is proposed.

Keywords:

• Rehabilitation
• Offenders
• Risk–Needs–Responsivity

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Peter Enticott for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

Hollin (1989) notes that an earlier conceptualisation of social learning theory was provided by Rotter in the 1954 work Social Learning and Clinical Psychology.

There is also a version of the LSI for young offenders (Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLSI/CMI); Hoge et al., 2002) that is based on the PCC and the risk–needs–responsivity approach.

Prochaska and colleagues emphasise that therapeutic change occurs in stages ranging from the person's unawareness of the need for change (i.e. pre-contemplation) to the development and implementation of strategies that may reduce the likelihood of relapse after they have actually made the therapeutic change (i.e. relapse prevention).