Predicting Short-Term Parole Outcome in Substance Abusing Offenders with the Lifestyle Criminality Screening Form

Abstract

The purpose of this study was three-fold: determine whether scores on the Lifestyle Criminality Screening Form (LCSF), a recidivism and re-offense risk assessment procedure, predict future criminal and drug use outcomes in substance abusing parolees, verify whether LCSF-defined risk identifies parolees likely to benefit from a case management strengths program, and ascertain whether the LCSF is as effective with women as it is with men. These three topic areas (use of the LCSF with substance abusing offenders, testing the risk principle, and seeing whether the LCSF applies to women) represent gaps in the current state of knowledge on the LCSF. In a secondary analysis of data including 811 (616 men, 195 women) substance-abusing adult parolees, results revealed that the LCSF was the only variable, out of six, to predict all six outcomes of interest across 3- and 9-month follow-up periods. When the sample was broken down by gender, the LCSF predicted all six outcomes in men but only the three 9-month outcomes in women. In an unanticipated development, men exposed to a case management strengths program reported more subsequent crime and drug use than participants not exposed to this special case management program.