Validation of the youth level of service/case management inventory with Saskatchewan young offenders

Abstract

The Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI), an instrument developed by Hoge and Andrews (1996a; 1996b), was designed to determine risk of recidivism for young offenders. The YLS/CMI's development was based on the Personal, Interpersonal, and Community-Reinforcement theory (Andrews & Bonta, 1998) which proposes that antisocial attitudes, associates, behavioral history, and personality are the most important predictors of criminal behavior. The current investigation examined the predictive validity of the YLS/CMI in predicting recidivism for Saskatchewan Young Offenders as well as investigating the roles of antisocial attitudes, associates, criminal history, and personality in predicting future criminal behavior for this population. Further, the study explored the effectiveness of the YLS/CMI to predict recidivism for Aboriginal young offenders as well as for male and female young offenders. Relationships among the YLS/CMI composite score and subscale scores and the two measures of recidivism were investigated through correlations. Results revealed significant positive relationships between the composite and subscale scores and both outcome measures with some differences within the subgroups noted. Results also indicated that criminal history, negative peers and antisocial attitudes were predictive of reoffending behavior. Antisocial personality, however, was not predictive of either measure of recidivism. Overall, it was concluded that the YLS/CMI demonstrated adequate predictive ability with Saskatchewan Young Offenders.