Evaluating concurrent validity of criminal justice and clinical assessments among women on probation

Bibliographic Data

ID21226020
AuthorsCamila D Odio (0000-0002-1730-4380, Yale New Haven Health System), Megan Carroll (0000-0002-8646-4257), Megan K Carroll (0000-0001-5355-1357, Yale University), Susan Glass, Ashley Bauman, Faye S Taxman (0000-0001-9530-731X, George Mason University), Jaimie P Meyer (0000-0001-5735-385X, Yale University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume6
Issue1
Pages7-7
Publication date2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHealth & Justice (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2194-7899 • E-ISSN: 2194-7899
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1186/s40352-018-0065-6
PMID29627964
OpenAlexW2801996870
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited32

BACKGROUND: Women in the criminal justice (CJ) system experience complex and comorbid medical, psychiatric, and substance use disorders, which often contribute to CJ involvement. To identify intersections between CJ and health needs, we calculated Spearman r correlations between concurrent CJ and clinical assessments from women on probation in Connecticut who were enrolled in a clinical trial. We examined longitudinal trends in CJ risk scores over 9 years of observation (2005-2014), modeling time to probation recidivism with shared gamma frailty models and comparing contiguous time points by Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed rank tests. RESULTS: Women (N = 31) were predominantly white (67.7%) with at least some high school education (58.1%) and mostly unemployed (77.4%) and unstably housed (83.9%). Most met clinical criteria for severe substance use and/or psychiatric disorders. Concurrent measures of substance use, mental health, social support, partnerships, and risk by the Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) and clinical assessments were not significantly correlated. The LSI-R personal/emotional sub-score, however, positively correlated with the Addiction Severity Index psychiatric composite score (r = 0.40, 95% CI 0.03-0.68, p = 0.03). After adjusting for age, race and number of previous events, having some high school education versus none marginally decreased the hazard for probation recidivism and having > 5 inpatient psychiatric admissions versus none increased the hazard of probation recidivism 7-fold (HR 7.49, 95% CI 1.33-42.12, p = 0.022). Women with 0-1 recurrent probation terms (n = 16) had a significantly lower mean LSI-R score than those with 2-4 recurrent probation terms (35.9 [SD 6.4] versus 39.2 [SD 3.0], p = 0.019), but repeated LSI-R scores did not change over time, nor vary significantly beyond the group mean. CONCLUSIONS: In this small, quantitative study of women on probation, widely used CJ assessment tools poorly reflected women's comorbid medical, psychiatric, and substance use needs and varied minimally over time. Findings illustrate the limitations of contemporary CJ assessment tools for women with complex needs. The field requires more comprehensive assessments of women's social and health needs to develop individualized targeted case plans that simultaneously improve health and CJ outcomes

Concurrent validity · Criminal justice · Criminology · Economic Justice · Political science · Psychometrics · Public health · Social policy · Sociology · Clinical Psychology · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis · Law · Medicine · Nursing · Psychology · Psychopathy, Forensic Psychiatry, Sexual Offending · Substance Abuse Treatment and Outcomes

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