TY - JOUR PY - 1998// TI - Prediction of adult criminal status from juvenile psychological assessment JO - Criminal justice and behavior A1 - Walsh, James A. A1 - Anderson, Laurence E. SP - 226 EP - 239 VL - 25 IS - 2 N2 - A total of 121 juvenile offenders assigned to a regional assessment center in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, for comprehensive psychological assessment between 1979 and 1984 were administered a test battery that included the WISC-R, the MMPI, and the Rorschach test. The offenders included 84 males and 37 females ages 12 to 15; among them were 48 Native Americans. In 1992, after a mean elapsed time of 9.9 years, all 121 were followed up and classified as either guilty (n = 61) or not guilty (n = 60) of a serious offense as an adult. Stepwise discriminant function analysis was used to find the best subset of variables with which to distinguish between the adults with a serious criminal record and those without. In order of importance, the four significant predictors selected from among 20 candidate variables were (a) the WISC-R comprehension subtest, (b) gender, (c) North American Native status, and (d) DQ+ from the Rorschach. A correct classification rate of 77.8% (as opposed to a base rate of 50.5%) was achieved, X 2 (1) = 35.01, p<.001. Keywords: Juvenile justice

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0093-8548 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0093854898025002005 ID - ref1 ER -