Level of Service Inventory

The Level of Supervision Inventory (LSI) is a theoretically driven and empirically supported offender classification instrument developed in the early 1980s by Canadian psychologists Don Andrews and James Bonta. The LSI was updated and renamed the Level of Service Inventory–Revised (LSI–R) in the 1990s. The purpose of the instrument is to help practitioners identify the risks/needs and responsivity factors of individual offenders so that the information can be used for case management planning. That is, the more accurate an assessment instrument is in identifying an offender's risks/needs and responsivity factors, the greater is the potential for matching the offender to a treatment program that will help reduce the offender's likelihood of recidivism.

Used by more than 900 agencies in North America, the LSI–R is among the most popular risk assessment instruments in use today. Its popularity may be attributed, in part, to the versatility of the instrument. Andrews and Bonta suggest that the LSI–R is appropriate for use in “identifying treatment targets and monitoring offender risk while under supervision and/or treatment services, making probation/supervision decisions, making decisions regarding placement into halfway houses, deciding appropriate security-level classification within institutions, and assessing the likelihood of recidivism.” The LSI–R has also been the subject of more than 40 academic studies. Although the instrument has not received unanimous support across samples, the predictive validity of the instrument has been supported across categories of gender, race, age, and criminal justice populations.

The LSI–R is a third-generation risk assessment instrument that includes 54 questions falling into 10 domains, or categories. These include criminal history, education/employment, finances, family/marriage, accommodation, leisure/recreation, companions, alcohol/drug problems, emotional/personal problems, and attitudes/orientation. Although the LSI–R does include a few questions that are static in nature, the majority of questions address dynamic factors. The inclusion of dynamic factors on the assessment is one of the strengths of the instrument, because dynamic factors can be targeted for change through treatment, whereas static factors are not amenable to change through treatment. Therefore, the LSI–R may be more oriented toward treatment than instruments from the second generation, which relied heavily on static factors or the clinical judgment assessments used in the first generation of offender classification.

The assessment is designed to be administered by a criminal justice practitioner who has been trained on the LSI–R instrument. This practi tioner administers the instrument in a semistructured interview with the offender that typically takes 45 minutes to an hour to complete. The 54 items on the assessment are scored either Yes or No or on a scale of 0 to 3, with 3 indicating a satisfactory situation with no need for improvement, 2 indicating a relatively satisfactory situation with some room for improvement evident, 1 indicating a relatively unsatisfactory situation with a need for improvement, and 0 indicating a very unsatisfactory situation with a very clear and strong need for improvement.

Upon completion of the interview, the criminal justice practitioner scores the offender on the 54 items. One point is awarded per item that is scored Yes, 1, or 0. The criminal practitioner tallies the points based on the offender's responses to the 54 questions to determine the total LSI–R score. The score is then compared against the range of scores that fall within each designated risk level: a score of 0 to 13 is low, a score of 14 to 23 is low/moderate, a score of 24 to 33 is moderate, a score of 34 to 40 [Page 232]is medium/high, and score of 41 to 54 is high. Based on the risk designation determined by the offender's total LSI–R score, the criminal justice practitioner is able to outline a case management plan most suitable for the offender based on his or her risks, needs, and responsivity factors.

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