Citation

Reisig MD, Holtfreter K, Morash M. Justice Q. 2006; 23(3): 384-405.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2006, Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Publisher Informa - Taylor and Francis Group)

DOI

10.1080/07418820600869152

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Actuarial tools, such as the Level of Supervision Inventory—Revised (LSI-R), are regularly used to classify offenders as “high,” “medium,” and “low” recidivism risks. Its supporters argue the theory upon which the LSI-R rests (i.e., social learning theory) accounts for criminal behavior among men and women. In short, the LSI-R is gender-neutral. Feminist criminologists question the LSI-R’s validity for female offender populations, especially women under community supervision. Guided by Daly’s (1992, 1994) pathways to crime framework, we use a sample of women under community supervision in Minnesota and Oregon to evaluate the LSI-R’s performance across offender subgroups. The results show that the LSI-R misclassifies a significant portion of socially and economically marginalized women with gendered offending contexts. Predictive accuracy was observed for women who did not follow gendered pathways into criminality, whose offending context was similar to males, and who occupied a relatively advantaged social location.