Deconstructing the risk principle

Abstract

T he article by Zweig, Yahner, and Redcross (2011, this issue) is one of the strongest tests to date of the risk principle. Offenders were randomly assigned to a transitional jobs program. The risk of reoffending levels—high, medium, and low—were based on exogenous factors that were in place prior to the intervention. The results showed that the transitional job program reduced recidivism relative to control group participants for the high-risk offenders but not for the lowor medium-risk offenders. One of the few ways that Zweig et al. could have improved on their design would have been to use preexisting risk levels as a blocking variable and to assign offenders randomly to the intervention and control groups within each of these risk levels. In this policy essay, we accept the premise of the risk principle, but we pose certain questions that should be addressed by criminologists to further our understanding of the mechanisms at work, and to enhance its utility as a public policy tool. We start by deconstructing elements of the risk principle, acknowledging the original statement by Andrews, Bonta, and Hoge (1990). We also give credit to expositions by Lowenkamp and Latessa (2004) andLowenkamp, Latessa, andHolsinger (2006) in expressing the relationship among risk, supervision, and program intensity.