PREDICTION OF ADULT CRIMINAL STATUS FROM JUVENILE PSYCHOLOGICAL-ASSESSMENT

A total of 121 juvenile offenders assigned to a regional assessment ce nter in Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, for comprehensive psychological assessment between 1979 and 1984 were administered a test battery tha t included the WISC-R, the MMPI, and the Rorschach test. The offenders included 84 males and 37 females ages 12 to 15; among them were 48 Na tive Americans. In 1992, after a mean elapsed time of 9.9 years, all 1 21 were followed up and classified as either guilty (n = 61) or nor gu ilty (n = 60) of a serious offense as an adult Stepwise discriminant f unction analysis was used to find the best subset of variables with wh ich to distinguish between the adults with a serious criminal record a nd those without. In order of importance, the four significant predict ors selected from among 20 candidate variables were Ca) the WISC-R com prehension subtest, (b) gender, (c) North American Native status, and (d) DQ+ from the Rorschach. A correct classification rate of 77.8% (as opposed to a base rate of 50.5%) was achieved, chi(2) (1)= 35.01, p < .001.