NCJ Number
80192
Date Published
1980
Length
124 pages
Annotation
This presentation, the first volume of a series, provides an overview of Iowa's Offender Risk Assessment Scoring System and details the coding procedures required to use it.
Abstract
The Offender Risk Assessment Scoring System is an offender screening tool designed to assist criminal justice decisionmakers with those decisions which require determining which offenders pose the greatest threat to society if released. The scoring system allows two separate but complementary assessments of risk: a general assessment, which predicts the likelihood and potential seriousness of new criminal acts; and a violence assessment, which predicts the likelihood of new crimes against persons. First, the system ranks offenders according to the probability of rearrest, revocation, or flight. Secondly, it rates offenders according to the likely number of new criminal charges being brought after release. Thirdly, the system predicts the seriousness of new criminal charges by assigning higher risk ratings to its use in predicting recidivism, the system has been shown to predict misconduct among inmates, including escape, assaultiveness, and other forms of maladjustment. Tables, diagrams, and footnotes are provided.