Validation of the Women's Risk Needs Assessment (WRNA) within Alabama Prisons: Findings and Lessons Learned from an Agency-Academic Partnership

Background & Purpose: In 2016, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) opened an investigation against the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) for failing to provide adequate safety and security for its inmate population. One response to the subsequent settlement agreement with the DOJ was for the ADOC to implement the Women’s Risk Needs Assessment (WRNA) in all of its women’s facilities. The WRNA is an evidence-based, gender-responsive classification system designed to assess the potential role that trauma, mental health, and relationships play in incarcerated women’s lives. The ADOC adopted the WRNA to inform their housing, programming, and security decisions, as well as to assess the relationships between women’s risks and needs and future misconducts and recidivism. Although the ability of the WRNA to predict infractions and recidivism has been validated in a variety of settings nationally, implementation of the WRNA requires a site-specific validation to ensure it accounts for characteristics unique to each distinctive site and population.

In order to fulfill one component of the settlement agreement, the ADOC contracted with a multidisciplinary team of academics from criminology, law, rehabilitation counseling, and social work to validate the WRNA’s use at three junctures of the carceral process: intake, reclassification, and pre-release. This presentation provides an overview of the 5-year validation study’s approach, findings, and insights into the successes and challenges of this academic–agency collaboration.

Methods: This study evaluated the validity of the WRNA to predict both misconduct within these correctional facilities and recidivism after release. Three samples representing different administrations and purposes of the WRNA were used to conduct this validation: (1) Intake (N=500), (2) Reclassification (N=400), and (3) Pre-release (N=400). WRNA and misconduct and recidivism data were collected by ADOC staff, deidentified, and transmitted to the research team for coding and analysis. Bivariate (i.e., Fisher’s exact) tests were conducted to understand correlations between WRNA scores and subsequent infractions and recidivism. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves were plotted to assess the performance of the WRNA in correctly classifying inmates into security categories.

Findings: For the intake and reclassification samples, statistically significant bivariate relationships were noted between WRNA risk/needs level and whether an inmate committed a high-level infraction within 18 months of the administration of their intake WRNA (p=0.031, Fisher’s exact test). Unlike intake and reclassification, there were no bivariate associations noted within pre-release samples between WRNA scores and recidivism at 18 months. Within all three samples, ROC curves indicated poor to substandard predictive validity (AUC<0.70), suggesting a need to adjust WRNA cut-off points to assess risk more accurately within ADOC facilities.

Conclusions & Implications: This validation of the WRNA aimed to evaluate the tool's effectiveness in assessing the risk and needs of incarcerated women and enhance decision-making processes related to housing, supervision, and treatment. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and other limitations affecting this project, the study provides valuable insights into the WRNA's predictive capabilities and critical reflections into the strengths and challenges of collaborations between individuals and organizations with potentially conflicting goals, values, and interests — academics and departments of corrections.