It’s Not Technically a Crime

Abstract

A long-held assumption in corrections is that parole technical violations (TVs) serve as a proxy of an offender’s potential of committing a new crime. Considering this notion has yet to be empirically tested coupled with recent research indicating a patterned difference between violators and recidivists, a test of this foundational assumption of community corrections is warranted. The current study aims to test this assumption using male and female offender samples from Washington State. Receiver operating characteristic curves are used to test the predictive validity of a generic risk–needs scale designed for felony recidivism on TV outcomes. Results suggest that the male-specific scale performs significantly worse when predicting nonserious and serious violations among the male sample. A female-specific scale, however, showed no significant difference in predicting female violations. The findings provide evidence that violations are not necessarily a proxy of new crime, and therefore offer wide implications for community corrections policy.