U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R): A Useful Risk Assessment Measure for Australian Offenders?

NCJ Number
227741
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 36 Issue: 7 Dated: July 2009 Pages: 728-740
Author(s)
Ching-I Hsu; Peter Caputi; Mitchell K. Byrne
Date Published
July 2009
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This study examined the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) with Australian offenders with respect to gender and sentence orders.
Abstract
Results indicate, that overall, the assessment instrument indicated modest predictive validity, with varying results for the different offender groups. Australian male offenders are relatively similar to male offenders from other jurisdictions; the specific variables predictive of reoffending apparent for different sentences ordered support the view that a third category in the traditional community/custodial group membership is justified and should be considered in future studies. For all female offenders, alcohol/drug abuse correlated significantly with reoffending, as did antisocial companions; female offenders also scored higher than male offenders on the Finance and Family/Marital subscales. Living arrangements and pro-criminal attitudes were also significantly correlated with reoffending for community and custodial offenders, while financial and leisure/recreation issues were found for custodial and community and custodial offenders. Logistic regression indicated that accommodation and antisocial companions were predictive of reoffending only for community offenders, with education/employment status apparent for custodial offenders. Significant differences for sentence orders (community, custodial, and a combination of community and custodial) were found, especially on the Criminal History, Education/Employment, and Companions subscales as well as on the LSI-R total score. Data were collected from archival LSI-R assessments from 2004 through 2007, retrieved from the Offender Information Management System (OIMS) database from the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Corrective Services (DCS). Tables and references