ABSTRACT
SUMMARY This chapter discussed an important aspect of community corrections: assessment of the offender. One of the most critical aspects of supervising the offender in the community is the determination of risk and need levels. Over the years, assessment and classification have advanced beyond guesswork about whether an offender might reoffend to more scientific approaches that examine both static and dynamic factors that can assist the community correctional professional in determining “who” and “what” to target in order to meet the goal of public protection. While offender assessment is not without its critics, the vast majority of community correctional agencies utilize assessment tools, which means that it is incumbent that these tools serve the purposes they were designed for: accurately sorting offenders into levels of risk and identifying those characteristics of the offender that are amenable to change.
