Developing a risk/need assessment tool for women offenders: a gender-informed approach

Pages264-279
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-03-2019-0017
Date21 November 2019
Published date21 November 2019
AuthorKaitlyn Wardrop,Kayla A. Wanamaker,Dena Derkzen
Subject MatterHealth & social care
Developing a risk/need assessment
tool for women offenders:
a gender-informed approach
Kaitlyn Wardrop, Kayla A. Wanamaker and Dena Derkzen
Abstract
Purpose Recently, correctional agencies have argued that there are differences between factors
influencing men and womens involvement in the criminal justice system. The purpose of this paper is to
examine the validity of a gender-informed risk/need assessment tool.
Design/methodology/approach The sample consisted of 620 women offenders admitted to federal
Canadian custody, as well as a matched-comparison group of 647 men. Items were selected from routine
assessments in an administrative database based on an extensive literature review of factors related to
criminal risk for women.
Findings Results showed that the items included in this assessment and the overall rating of risk/need
significantly predicted any return to custody for both women and men. As well, ratings incrementally
predicted any return to custody over and above other established tools.
Practical implications The gender-informed risk/need assessment tool, informed by the literature,
performed well for both men and women. The research highlights the complementary, not competing,
perspectives of gender-neutral and gender-responsive risk and need factors.
Originality/value Factors commonly considered gender-salient predicted risk for men and women. The
present study demonstrates that risk assessments tools for men and women should look beyond the factors
routinely assessed in the research to identify novel dynamic factorsthat contribute to risk for men and women
and could be targeted for intervention.
Keywords Risk assessment, Risk, Scale validation, Women offenders, Gender-informed,
Gender-responsive
Paper type Research paper
In the last 40 years, correctional agencies have begun to empirically examine the differences
between men and women offenders that affect reintegration and risk; incorporating gender-informed
approaches to the assessment and treatment of women offenders. The impetus for this change
within Canada was a ground-breaking report completed by the Task Force on Federally Sentenced
Women (1990), established by the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) to examine the
management practices and guiding policies concerning women offenders. The resulting report
mandated the agency to create the environment that empowers federally sentenced women to
make meaningful and responsible choices in order that they may live with dignity and respect
(p. 117). Since the early 1990s, CSC has made considerable gains in developing and implementing a
number of policy and operational changes to embody these principles for change. For example,
CSC has implemented a comprehensive women-centered correctional program model whereby
womens unique social realities are considered. Additionally, CSC has developed and implemented
women-centered training for staff who work in women offender institutions. This training provides
staff members with information on the specific needs of women offenders related to common
histories of trauma, self-injury and suicide attempts, as well as an understanding of what promotes
womens empowerment (for a more detailed description see Nolan et al., 2017).
Comparatively, the USA has started to implement similar changes with the development of the
Center for Gender and Justice (CGJ). The CGJ has worked alongside local, state and national
Received 11 March 2019
Revised 20 May 2019
Accepted 21 May 2019
Kaitlyn Wardrop,
Kayla A. Wanamaker and
Dena Derkzen are all based at
the Correctional Service of
Canada, Government of
Canada, Ottawa, Canada.
PAGE264
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VOL. 5 NO. 4 2019, pp.264-279, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2056-3841 DOI 10.1108/JCRPP-03-2019-0017
criminal justice agencies to provide a number of supports and services in an effort to develop
programs that are specific to women and girls through strategic planning and consultations
(Center for Gender and Justice, 2019).
Although contemporary criminal justice research and correctional program development have
generally recognized the distinctiveness of women offenders, it is only recently that research
has directly examined gender differences among mixed-gender correctional samples with
regard to criminal risk assessme nt. Importantly, the main goa ls of risk assessment are to ens ure
public safety and reduce an offenders risk to reoffend (Bell, 2014) by predicting reoffending,
identifying service needs, and examining the likelihood of success in the community. Traditional
risk assessment to ols, however, hav e typically been dev eloped and validat ed primarily on
samples of men offen ders, comprised o f factors found to be pr edictive of offendi ng for men.
In recent years, several risk assessment and case management planning tools have been
developed for use specifically with women offenders, and include factors that are
gender-neutral (e.g. equally predictive for men and women, such as criminal history and
employment) as well as factors that are considered gender-responsive (e.g. more predictive for
women than for men, s uch as mental healt h and childhood abus e). The developme nt of risk
assessment tools specific to women began in 1999 in the Colorado Department of Corrections,
with the development of the womens risk/needs assessment (WRNA; Van Voorhis et al.,
2010). This was followed by three projects in 2004 examining the validity of the WRNA
across different c orrectional samp les (e.g. probatio n, prison) in Maui, Min nesota and
Missouri, assessing different criminal outcomes (e.g. recidivism, institutional misconducts,
technical violations and rearrests; Van Voorhis et al., 2010).
Since the development of the WRNA, additional risk assessment tools for women have been
developedincluding the service planninginstrument for women (Orbis Partners,2006) developed in
Canada, used to assessgeneral and violent recidivism and thefemale additional manual (de Vogel
et al., 2014) developed in the Netherlands, used as an addition to the historical, clinical, risk
management 20 (Webster et al., 1995) to predict violent outcomes. Overall, preliminary research
has supported the use of these assessment toolsin predicting a variety of community and violent
outcomes (e.g. new criminal behavior, violations of release conditionsor any community failure) for
women offenders (de Vogel et al., 2014; Desmarais and Singh, 2013; Van Voorhis et al.,2013).
Although promising, more research is needed on risk assessment and women offenders to
replicate previous findings and further explore factors hypothesized to be particularly important in
the predictionof community failures for women. Additionally, from an operationalperspective, more
research is needed in examining factors that are predictive of returns to custody for women.
Gender-neutral perspective
Correctional agencies have predominately been guided by gender-neutral perspectives of
criminal behavior whereby effective offender assessment and treatment are assumed to explain
and reduce crimina l conduct regard less of gender (e.g. Andrews et a l., 2012; Bonta and
Andrews, 2017). Notably, this perspective incorporates research that typically focuses on men
and highlights fac tors that are found to b e predictive of mens c ommunity failure s. This
research, however, often fails to: include a comparison group of women offenders, examine
gender differences, or hypothesized female-salient factors (i.e. risk factors that predict
community failures for both genders, but the strength of the effect is stronger for females) and/
or examine female-specific risk/need factors (i.e. unique risk fact ors for females, not predictive
for males). The risk factors that have been found to have the strongest empirical support for
men and women (i.e. m ost predictive of co mmunity failures) in clude criminal history, antisoci al
attitudes, antisocial peers, antisocial personality, friends/marital dysfunction, educational/
employment defic its, substance abu se and inappropria te use of leisure time (e .g. the Central
Eightrisk factors; Bonta and Andrews, 2017). Although there has been an abundance of
empirical evidence supporting the predictive strength of these risk factors with women
(e.g. Andrews et al., 2012; Stewart et al., 2017), emerging evidence suggests that additional
risk factors not currently considered by most risk assessment tools such as a history of trauma,
mental health problems and parenting pressures (Geraghty and Woodhams, 2015;
Van Voorhis et al., 2010) may be espec ially important fo r women.
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