Revalidation of the Custody Rating Scale for Men Offenders

What we did

The predictive validity of the CRS for men offenders was assessed using a dataset of admissions to federal custody between 2013/2014 and 2018/2019. The dataset included men offenders admitted to federal custody on a Warrant of Committal (WOC, i.e., a new sentence; N = 23,007), or following a revocation of conditional release (N = 6,240). 

What we found

A higher CRS designation was associated with a greater likelihood of involvement in a negative institutional event (see Table 1). This relationship was stronger for new admissions relative to revocation admissions. A similar pattern was found in regards to OSL and institutional outcomes. Area Under the Curve (AUC) values were examined to assess the predictive ability of the CRS and OSL in relation to institutional outcomes. AUC values exceeded the threshold of ‘acceptable’ predictive accuracy with respect to the WOC group, but not the revocation group, in the case of both the CRS and OSL (see Table 2). 

What it means

Results reaffirm that the CRS is predictive of institutional outcomes for men offenders at initial intake, and suggest efficacy in use of professional judgement, as evidenced by the similar predictive ability of the CRS and OSL. However, the CRS holds less predictive accuracy for revocation admissions.

^a Refers to involvement in at least one security or behavioural incident during the sentence for which the CRS was applied and following CRS administration.

^b Refers to an offender’s receipt of any serious or minor disciplinary charge during the sentence for which the CRS was applied and following CRS administration. Only charges resulting in an outcome of ‘guilty’ were included.

* The Area Under the Curve (AUC) is used to examine the predictive accuracy of a measure in ROC analyses; a value of 0.5 represents chance prediction, while a value of 1.0 represents perfect prediction.

Note. CI = Confidence Interval

References:

Gobeil, R. (2011). The Custody Rating Scale as applied to male offenders (Research Report R-256). Ottawa, ON: Correctional Service of Canada.