NCJ Number
125992
Journal
Criminology Volume: 28 Issue: 3 Dated: (August 1990) Pages: 497-506
Date Published
1990
Length
10 pages
Annotation
Faced with prison overcrowding, institutions must seek alternatives to imprisonment. An underresearched possibility is the use of halfway houses for the placement of offenders serving prison sentences.
Abstract
The LSI, an objective risk classification instrument, was administered to inmates from three jails. Low-scoring inmates from two of the jails were flagged for placement in correctional halfway houses, and the third jail was blind to LSI scores. The halfway house placement rate was 51 percent for the jails that used LSI scores and 16 percent for the jail using traditional subjective classification procedures. The results suggest that subjective offender assessments run the risk of overclassifying offenders whereas objective risk assessments yield more appropriate classifications. 3 tables and 19 references. (Author abstract)