Reliability and Predictive Validity of the LSI-OR With Female Offenders

Betting Against the Odds: The Mysterious Case of the Clinical Override in Risk Assessment of Adult Convicted Offenders

“…In the current study, the clinical override was a rare phenomenon, perhaps lower than previously observed for a general population of adult offenders (e.g., Brews, 2009;Orton, 2014). This low prevalence supports the idea that CJPs, especially with offenders sentenced to short-term sanctions, tend to approve, or stick with the results of recent actuarial risk assessment tools (Quirion & D'Addese, 2011).…”

“…The use of the clinical override with young offenders, however, is less consistent with rates varying between 7.0% and 58.7% across studies (e.g., McCafferty, 2017;Schmidt et al, 2016;Vaswani & Merone, 2014). These studies also highlighted the fact that the clinical override is typically used to increase an offender's criminal recidivism risk beyond what is suggested by a risk assessment tool (e.g., Brews, 2009;Storey et al, 2012). Others, nevertheless, have observed more downward risk modifications (e.g., Gore, 2007).…”

“…In fact, across different studies, several researchers made similar observations about the relatively high likelihood of convicted sex offenders to be subjected to a clinical override 2 (e.g., Carns & Martin, 2011;Cohen et al, 2016). Regarding the offender's disposition, Brews's (2009) study on a cohort of female offenders under the jurisdiction of Ontario's correctional services (n = 2,831) revealed an over-representation of OSCO among offenders serving a sentence in the community. Studies have also found that males are more likely to be subjected to a clinical override than females (e.g., Chappell et al, 2013;Cohen et al, 2016), especially in an upward fashion (see Orton et al, 2021).…”

Broken Legs, Clinical Overrides, and Recidivism Risk: An Analysis of Decisions to Adjust Risk Levels With the LS/CMI

“…The objective of this study was to test the effectiveness of clinical overrides in a large sample of offenders in a context where clinical overrides were strongly discouraged. Although the use of overrides is common practice in other jurisdictions and regions (11.6% of cases for Brews, 2009, and up to 74% for Schmidt et al, 2016), their use in Quebec has been extremely cautious—in only 6.5% of evaluations (237 of 3,646). Given the evaluation criteria for participants (they had a correctional sentence of 6 months or more), a substantial proportion of the overrides was made in a downward direction.…”

Psychometric Examination of Treatment Change Among Mentally Disordered Offenders: A Risk–Needs Analysis

“…A number of studies have been conducted demonstrating the LS scales sound psychometric properties, including its reliability and predictive accuracy for a range of outcomes (e.g., Brews, 2009; Rettinger & Andrews, 2010; Wormith, Hogg, & Guzzo, 2012) and with MDOs specifically (Girard & Wormith, 2004; Skeem et al, 2014). In a recent meta-analysis of 128 studies comprising 137,931 offenders, Olver, Stockdale, et al (2014) reported the LS scales to significantly predict general and violent recidivism ( r = .29 and .23, respectively); these effects were upheld across gender and ethnicity.…”