Better Practices in the Development and Validation of Recidivism Risk Assessments: The Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–4. (May 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Duwe, Grant
• Is Part Of: Criminal justice policy review. Volume 30:Number 4(2019)
• Page Start: 538
• Page End: 564
• Publication Date: 2019-05
• Subjects: risk assessment -- sexual recidivism -- sex offender -- MnSOST-4; Criminal justice, Administration of -- United States -- Periodicals; 364.973
• DOI: 10.1177/0887403417718608
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0887-4034

Abstract

This study examines the development and validation of the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–4 (MnSOST-4) on a dataset consisting of 5, 745 sex offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 2003 and 2012. Bootstrap resampling was used to select predictors, and k-fold and split-sample methods were used to internally validate the MnSOST-4. Using sex offense reconviction within 4 years of release from prison as the failure criterion, the data showed that 130 (2.3%) offenders in the overall sample were recidivists. Multiple classification methods and performance metrics were used to develop the MnSOST-4 and evaluate its predictive performance on the test set. The results from the regularized logistic regression algorithm showed that the MnSOST-4 performed well in predicting sexual recidivism in the test set, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.835. Additional analyses on the test set revealed that the MnSOST-4 outperformed the Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–3 (MnSOST-3), Minnesota Sex Offender Screening Tool–Revised (MnSOST-R), and Static-99 in predicting sexual reoffending.