Women’s Risk Factors and Their Contributions to Existing Risk/Needs Assessment: The Current Status of a Gender-Responsive Supplement

TLDR: In this paper, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used gender-neutral risk needs assessments, and subsets of the genderresponsive scales achieved statistically significant contributions to gender neutral models, including parental stress, family support, self-efficacy, educational assets, housing safety, anger/hostility, and current mental health factors.

Abstract: A growing body of scholarship faults existing risk/needs assessment models for neglecting the risk factors most relevant to women offenders. In response, a series of gender-responsive assessment models were tested for their contributions to widely used gender-neutral risk needs assessments. In six of eight samples studied, subsets of the gender-responsive scales achieved statistically significant contributions to gender-neutral models. Promising results were found for the following: (a) parental stress, family support, self-efficacy, educational assets, housing safety, anger/hostility, and current mental health factors in probation samples; (b) child abuse, anger/hostility, relationship dysfunction, family support, and current mental health factors among prisoners; and (c) adult victimization, anger/hostility, educational assets, and family support among released inmates. The predictive validity of gender-neutral assessments was strong in seven of eight samples studied. However, findings for both gender-n...