NCJ Number
203241
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 30 Issue: 6 Dated: December 2003 Pages: 709-721
Date Published
December 2003
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This document examines the effectiveness of the Self-Appraisal questionnaire (SAQ) in predicting release outcome during a 5-year period.
Abstract
The SAQ is a quantitative risk-need instrument consisting of 72 items that constitute 8 subscales. The first six of the subscales are used for prediction of recidivism. These subscales include criminal tendencies, antisocial personality problems, conduct problems, criminal history, alcohol and/or drug abuse, and antisocial associates. The other two subscales are the Anger and the Validity subscales. A total of 599 male offenders that were incarcerated in various institutions in the Ontario region of the Canadian Federal correctional system and that had completed the SAQ formed the sample pool for the study. They were followed up for 60 months at 4-month intervals. Outcome criteria measures were violent recidivism, commission of a new offense, general recidivism (returning to any form of custody), and any failure (a composite measure recording failure on any of the following variables: negative parole reports, violation of parole conditions, incurring new charges, or a new conviction). The results supported the initial hypothesis that the SAQ would be valid for making postrelease predictions during the 5-year period. The results were better compared with the findings in the 2-year follow-up study. Two subscales did not significantly correlate with the postcriterion of violent acts. This study showed an improvement in both sensitivity and relative improvement of predictions over chance (RIOC) when compared with the 2-year follow-up study. The results of this survival analysis reflect some improvement over that of the 2-year follow-up study, particularly on the criterion of committing violent acts after release. The results provide further evidence for the sensitivity and predictive validity of the SAQ as the SAQ was able to reflect changes that occurred over time. 1 figure, 28 references