LONG-TERM PREDICTIVE UTILITY OF THE BASE EXPECTANCY SCORE

• NCJ Number: 146540
• Journal: Howard Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 32 Issue: 4 Dated: (November 1993) Pages: 276-290
• Author(s): S D Gottfredson; D M Gottfredson
• Date Published: 1993
• Length: 15 pages
• Grant Number(s): 88-IJ-CX-0002; 86-IJ-CX-0048
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Measurement/Evaluation Device

Annotation

After a historical overview of the development and use of the Base Expectancy Score (BE), this article examines its predictive validity over more than 25 years and over a variety of outcome criteria of recent interest to the "criminal career" research paradigm.

Abstract

The BE scale considered in this study was developed from a study of case files on 873 men selected in a manner designed to approximate random selection from all men released from prison to California parole supervision in 1956. It was constructed to predict parole outcomes. The current study involved a sample of 6,000 men incarcerated in California prisons in the early 1960's. The group was chosen to reflect a random sample of all men in California's prisons at that time. The findings provide further evidence of the validity of the BE scale. Besides a stable predictive validity, it was useful with a variety of criteria different from those on which it was initially constructed. The BE scale performed as well as did a variety of models based on recently proposed criteria. 1 table, 12 notes, and 70 references