Empirically identifying factors related to violence risk in corrections

The authors used structural modeling to predict institutional aggression am ong male mentally ill offenders using the predictors of anger, antisocial p ersonality style, current violent offense, ethnicity, anti impulsivity. Mea sures included the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale, the Buss-Perry Aggression Q uestionnaire, the Personality Assessment Inventory, age, ethnicity, current violent offense, victim injury from current offense, and institutional inc idents of physical and verbal aggression. The model fit the data, and accou nted for 94% and 87% of the variance of physical and verbal aggression, res pectively. Results indicated anger, antisocial personality sale, and impuls ivity are stronger predictors of institutional aggression than are ethnicit y and current violent offense; anger was the best predictor. Results sugges t dynamic variables such as anger can be targeted for clinical intervention to reduce institutional violence. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Lt d.