Dr Ryan Botha1, Mx Tara Nicholls1, Dr Simon Davies2
1Department Of Corrections, New Zealand, 2Department of Corrections, New Zealand, 3Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Biography:
Dr Ryan Botha is a Neuropsychologist and Principal Adviser for Psychology Research at the Department of Corrections in New Zealand. Dr Botha worked as a Correctional Psychologist at Auckland South Correctional Facility (ASCF) before taking up a research based role within the Office of the Chief Psychologist in Wellington. His research interests include personality psychopathology, risk assessment, cross-cultural psychology, neuropsychology, and psychological treatment efficacy. Dr Botha's primary research focus is one ensuring equity in clinical risk assessment practice within New Zealand and his work in this area has been published in several international journals.
Validating risk measures across jurisdictions is essential for ensuring correctional practice is evidence-based; validation can also highlight important differences within jurisdictions, including across ethnicity of the individuals being assessed, and across the staff who administer the measures. In this study, we examined the psychometric properties of the Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (LS/CMI) in a sample of 619 men under the management of the New Zealand Department of Corrections. The LS/CMI demonstrated adequate internal reliability and expected convergent validity with two other general risk measures in use in New Zealand. Over a 1-year follow-up, domain and total LS/CMI scores demonstrated moderate discriminative validity, and significant incremental validity for convictions for any offence and convictions for violent offenses. We found no differences in discriminative accuracy for New Zealand Māori and Zealand European subgroups on either recidivism outcome. In contrast, on both recidivism outcomes, assessments completed by psychologists demonstrated higher discriminative accuracy than assessments completed by group facilitators, who have less experience and training in risk assessment. Overall, consistent with LS/CMI validation research from other jurisdictions, results support the continued use of the LS/CMI in New Zealand, including with people from different ethnicities; however, additional support and training may be needed for some staff who are required to use the measure.