The development of violence subscales from the LSI-OR

Abstract

Current literature suggests that the Level of Service Inventory (LSI) and its derivatives (LSI-R, LS/CMI, LSI-OR) are capable of predicting violent recidivism, even though they were not initially designed for this function (Girard & Wormith, 2004; Mills & Kroner, 2006). The purpose of this study was to generate violence prediction scales, based on items or subscales from the LSI-OR, using five different statistical techniques. These analyses were completed on the full construction sample, then the males and the females separately to determine how the scales differ from each other and what, if any, benefits would accrue from utilizing a gender-specific scale.

A cohort of 27,027 offenders who were released from custody or entered into community supervision over a one year period was included in the study. There was an average followup time of 4.4 years. In this sample there was a general recidivism rate of 36.0% and a violent recidivism rate of 11.3%. Fifteen violence prediction scales were generated that ranged in predictive validity from r = .139 to r = .214. The scale with the highest predictive validity was the 11 item scale created from the full sample using the item linear regression technique. The scale contained items indicating that history of assault, lack of education and anger management issues were related to violent recidivism. Risk levels were developed for this new scale to classify offenders from very low to very high risk.

Although there was little difference in the predictive validity of the generated scales, the stepwise multiple linear regression technique was identified as the most successful method of creating a tool for predicting violent recidivism. There was no increase in predictive validity when using the scale that was developed for just the females in the sample, although fewer items were consistently generated for females than males. Therefore the full sample item linear regression scale is recommended for the prediction of violent recidivism of both male and female offenders in the jurisdiction from which the data were collected. Future research directions may replicate this study in other populations and further analyze the gender differences in violent recidivism.