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Development of an actuarial static risk model suitable for automatic scoring for predicting juvenile recidivism
Author(s) -
McKinlay Audrey,
James Victoria L.,
Grace Randolph C.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
legal and criminological psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.65
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 2044-8333
pISSN - 1355-3259
DOI - 10.1111/lcrp.12024
Subject(s) - recidivism , juvenile , psychology , risk assessment , human factors and ergonomics , actuarial science , poison control , injury prevention , juvenile delinquency , suicide prevention , statistics , forensic engineering , econometrics , medical emergency , engineering , computer science , clinical psychology , medicine , psychiatry , economics , computer security , mathematics , biology , genetics
Objectives To test the feasibility of an actuarial model for juvenile offending suitable for automatic scoring. Design We identified a nationally representative sample of 936 young persons aged 13–17 (745 male, 191 female) who received a juvenile justice intake in 2002 in New Zealand. Methods Best‐subsets logistic regression and a formal model selection criterion were used to generate a predictive model for reoffending, and a conservative estimate of accuracy was obtained with cross‐validation. Results Recidivism during a 1‐year follow‐up was significantly higher for male (60.8%) compared to female (46.6%) delinquents. The model showed that young persons who were male, younger at their first social welfare intake, and had more prior court dates and a greater frequency of contact with police, were more likely to re‐offend. The accuracy of the model was moderately high (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve = .710). A model developed specifically for the female cases failed to provide a significant increase in predictive accuracy. Conclusions These results demonstrate the feasibility of an actuarial model for juvenile offending that is suitable for automatic scoring. Although male delinquents pose a higher absolute risk of juvenile offending than female delinquents, a common set of items related to history of contact with police and social welfare agencies provide a similarly accurate measure of relative risk for both sexes.