1 Classification of Women Offenders: Gender-Responsive Approaches to Risk/Needs Assessment

Risk/needs assessment and the treatment of risk factors are fundamental tasks for public health, community mental health, and corrections. Corrections, in particular, has a standard practice of assessing offenders according to their risk of re-offending and matching the results to appropriate supervision or custody levels. Risk and needs assessments also affect decisions regarding programming and therapy, because they direct case managers to give special emphasis to those offender problems associated with future offending. Notwithstanding their everyday use in corrections, most risk assessments were developed for men and applied to women without regard for their validity or appropriateness (Chesney Lind, 1997). For example, a recent survey of state correctional classification directors found that only 14 states had validated their institutional classification systems on women offenders (VanVoorhis & Presser, 2001). The directors further believed that the invalid systems were creating problems of over-classification, where women were being held at more secure prisons than warranted on the basis of their behavior. Additionally, the directors indicated that the current generation of classification systems ignored unique needs of women offenders—those pertaining to health, relationships, children, self-esteem and trauma. Focus groups with women offenders confirmed these concerns, and a limited number of empirical studies of women offenders offered simila