Administrators in prison, jails, and community corrections agencies are paying increasing attention to the need to identify and address the needs of the growing number of women under criminal justice supervision. They are also adapting assessment procedures to varying literacy rates and levels of English proficiency, as well as the diverse cultural experiences of people under criminal justice supervision in the United States.

Gender-Specific Needs
To accommodate the gender-specific issues of women under criminal justice supervision, assessment procedures should include screenings for histories of trauma, violence, and abuse. At the same time, corrections staff should take care not to delve into personal abuse histories that they have little ability to address, either through counseling or service referrals. Similarly, assessments should include questions about children and familial relationships, but be sensitive to women’s potential reluctance to discuss their children for fear of losing child custody. Dynamic risk factors, such as substance abuse and mental illness, which play a particularly significant role in women’s recidivism risk, should also be addressed.

Varying Levels of Literacy
Assessment procedures should be designed to identify and accommodate the needs of people with varying literacy levels. Specifically, people who cannot read or write above a certain grade level (such as eigth grade) should not be given self-administered assessment instruments. Instead, corrections staff should administer assessment instruments verbally and manually record the individual’s answers. Assessing for literacy levels early in the period of incarceration will enable staff to ensure that assessment results are accurate and to prioritize people with the greatest literacy needs for educational programming.

Varying Levels of English Proficiency
People with limited written and verbal English proficiency should be identified as early as possible in the period of incarceration and, wherever possible, provided, with assessment instruments in their first language and / or interviewed verbally by a staff person who can translate assessment questions.

Cultural Competency
Where possible, assessment processes should be sensitive to the cultural experiences of people who are incarcerated, which will vary by region and institution. Strategies for accomplishing this vary, but can include employing staff with backgrounds similar to that of people who are incarcerated. More research in this area is needed.

To this end, the Bureau of Justice Assistance awarded a grant to the Crime and Justice Institute to conduct a literature review of culturally-specific assessment instruments in the criminal justice field, and to assess the need for, and to develop and pilot, several assessment instruments for use with people in various communities. When completed, the instruments will be made publicly available.