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52 Crime & Delinquency 3 (2006)

handle is hein.journals/cadq52 and id is 1 raw text is: Special Issue-Guest Editor Introduction RISK, NEEDS, RESPONSIVITY: IN ACTION OR INACTION? It is always more easy to discover and proclaim general principles than to apply them. Winston Churchill It goes without saying that no one correctional program could be expected to work for all offenders. The elements of each intervention must be suited to the specific needs of the clientele, and the most costly and intensive services should be reserved for those individuals who present the most seri- ous challenges to public safety and are apt to be in need of the interventions. Failing to heed these self-evident propositions is almost certain to water down clinical and public safety effects. Worse still, it may force researchers to average their outcome analyses across programs that administered a com- bination of clinically indicated, clinically irrelevant, and clinically contrain- dicated services. This virtually ensures that effect sizes will range from statis- tically insignificant to small. And the results frustrate practitioners. Approximately a decade and a half ago, Don Andrews, James Bonta, and their colleagues (Andrews, Bonta, & Hoge, 1990; Andrews, Zinger, et al., 1990) drew forth the essence of this argument in proposing a sophisticated and comprehensive conceptual framework for correctional programming. Under the rubric of what they termed risk-needs-responsivity (RNR) theory, they specified how an offender's criminogenic characteristics should drive the selection and implementation of correctional services. These crimino- genic characteristics relate both to risk (i.e., to those factors that predispose an individual to commit criminal conduct) and to need (i.e., to those distur- bances in biopsychosocial functioning that impinge on an individual's ability to function stably in society). Needless to say, effective implementation of the RNR model requires, at a minimum, the development and use of valid risk and needs assessment tools as well as the creation of an array of treatment programs that are capable of addressing the mix of risk and need characteris- tics commonly presented by offenders. Unfortunately, numerous scholars CRIME & DELINQUENCY, Vol. 52 No. 1, January 2006 3-6 DOI: 10.1177/0011128705281757 0 2006 Sage Publications 3

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