NCJ Number
138877
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 20 Issue: 4 Dated: (1992) Pages: 343- 353
Date Published
1992
Length
11 pages
Annotation
Because prison overcrowding tends to occur in higher security settings, an objective inmate classification system may provide one means of achieving a more equal distribution of inmates among the different security levels. In this study, Ontario's Level of Supervision Inventory (LSI) was administered to 467 inmates and their institutional behavior and security classifications were monitored.
Abstract
This study demonstrated that the LSI test results accurately predicted prison infractions and recidivism for a representative sample of inmates. LSI guidelines were constructed with two objectives in mind: to find cutoff scores that yielded groups with misconduct rates that approximated the rates typically found at the minimum-, medium-, and maximum-security levels and to relieve overcrowding at the top two levels. A strict implementation of these guidelines would have resulted in a decrease of 38 percent in security classification. However, there was no significant correlation between security level and recidivism, as offender risk accounted for the variance in recidivism outcome. Two other findings of note were that parole rates were higher than anticipated for overclassified inmates and overclassification was higher among inmates with longer sentences. 11 tables, 26 references, and 1 appendix.