Key Point

Making good decisions about how to manage and rehabilitate offenders requires having information about offenders’ level of risk to re-offend – and, ideally, up-to-date information about their risk to re-offend.  Correctional psychology has long made assumptions about dynamic risk factors (risk variables that can theoretically change over time) – what those risk factors are, and how they change – but, many of these assumptions have not been directly tested.

Key Findings

Working with large longitudinal datasets of repeated assessments of risk factors, we have demonstrated that up-to-date information about dynamic risk factors can enhance prediction of recidivism.  The tests compared whether more recent assessments added to prediction beyond earlier assessments of the same risk factors.

Lloyd, C.D., Hanson, R.K., Richards, D.K., & Serin, R.C. (accepted). Reassessment improves prediction of criminal recidivism: A prospective study of 3,421 individuals in New Zealand. Psychological Assessment. doi:10.1037/pas0000813 

[pdf-embedder url=”http://calebdlloyd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Lloyd-Hanson-Richards-Serin_in-press.pdf”]

Read More

Click here for a comprehensive discussion of dynamic risk factors, and analyses demonstrating their ability to predict recidivism in “real time”.