Re: RISK II - No Key Needed Hack Torrent
Joseph Zyiuahndy
The ratings for more than half of the 35 areas on the 2019 High-Risk List remain largely unchanged. Since GAO's last update in 2017, seven areas improved, three regressed, and two showed mixed progress by improving in some criteria but declining in others. Where there has been improvement in high-risk areas, congressional actions have been critical in spurring progress in addition to actions by executive agencies.
GAO is removing two of the seven areas with improved ratings from the High-Risk List because they met all of GAO's five criteria for removal. The first area, Department of Defense (DOD) Supply Chain Management, made progress on seven actions and outcomes related to monitoring and demonstrated progress that GAO recommended for improving supply chain management. For example, DOD improved the visibility of physical inventories, receipt processing, cargo tracking, and unit moves. Improvements in asset visibility have saved millions of dollars and allow DOD to better meet mission needs by providing assets where and when needed.
There are two new areas on the High-Risk List since 2017. Added in 2018 outside of GAO's biennial high-risk update cycle, the Government-Wide Personnel Security Clearance Process faces significant challenges related to processing clearances in a timely fashion, measuring investigation quality, and ensuring information technology security. The second area, added in 2019, is Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Acquisition Management. VA has one of the most significant acquisition functions in the federal government, both in obligations and number of contract actions. GAO identified seven contracting challenges for VA, such as outdated acquisition regulations and policies, lack of an effective medical supplies procurement strategy, and inadequate acquisition training.
Overall, 24 high-risk areas have either met or partially met all five criteria for removal from the list; 20 of these areas fully met at least one criterion. Ten high-risk areas have neither met nor partially met one or more criteria.
While progress is needed across all high-risk areas, GAO has identified nine that need especially focused executive and congressional attention, including Ensuring the Cybersecurity of the Nation, Resolving the Federal Role in Housing Finance, addressing Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Insurance Programs, Managing Risks and Improving VA Health Care, and ensuring an effective 2020 Decennial Census. Beyond these specific areas, focused attention is needed to address mission-critical skills gaps in 16 high-risk areas, confront three high-risk areas concerning health care and tax law enforcement that include billions of dollars in improper payments each year, and focus on a yawning tax gap.
The federal government is one of the world's largest and most complex entities; about $4.1 trillion in outlays in fiscal year 2018 funded a broad array of programs and operations. GAO's high-risk program identifies government operations with vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or in need of transformation to address economy, efficiency, or effectiveness challenges.
This biennial update describes the status of high-risk areas, outlines actions that are still needed to assure further progress, and identifies two new high-risk areas needing attention by the executive branch and Congress. Solutions to high-risk problems save billions of dollars, improve service to the public, and would strengthen government performance and accountability.
This report describes GAO's views on progress made and what remains to be done to bring about lasting solutions for each high-risk area. Substantial efforts are needed by the executive branch to achieve progress on high-risk areas. Addressing GAO's hundreds of open recommendations across the high-risk areas and continued congressional oversight and action are essential to achieving greater progress.
Developed in the 1980s and first formalized in 1990, the risk-need-responsivity model has been used with increasing success to assess and rehabilitate criminals in Canada and around the world. As suggested by its name, it is based on three principles: 1) the risk principle asserts that criminal behaviour can be reliably predicted and that treatment should focus on the higher risk offenders; 2) the need principle highlights the importance of criminogenic needs in the design and delivery of treatment; and 3) the responsivity principle describes how the treatment should be provided.
Since 1990, a number of principles have been added to the core theoretical principles to enhance and strengthen the design and implementation of effective interventions. These additional principles describe, for example, the importance of staff establishing collaborative and respectful working relationships with clients and correctional agencies and managers providing policies and leadership that facilitate and enable effective interventions (Andrews, 2001; Andrews & Bonta, 2006; Andrews & Dowden, in press). Although we should not lose sight of the full set of principles (we will say a bit more about them at the end of the paper) our focus here will be with the core principles of risk, need and responsivity.
This paper summarizes how the RNR model has influenced development of offender risk assessment instruments and offender rehabilitation programs. In so doing, we provide a summary of the evidence that demonstrates how the criminal behaviour of offenders can be predicted in a reliable, practical and useful manner. We also provide evidence of how rehabilitation programs can produce significant reductions in recidivism when these programs are in adherence with the RNR model.
For much of the first half of the twentieth century, the assessment of offender risk was left in the hands of correctional staff (i.e., probation officers and prison staff) and clinical professionals (i.e., psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers). Guided by their own professional training and experience, staff would make judgements as to who required enhanced security and supervision. The assessment of risk was a matter of professional judgement.
Some notable examples of the actuarial risk assessment scales that were developed during this period are the Salient Factor Score developed in the United States (Hoffman & Beck, 1974) and the Statistical Information on Recidivism scale developed for the Correctional Service of Canada (Nuffield, 1982). These risk assessment instruments are still used today and new ones continue to be developed (Copas & Marshall, 1998).
Before long it became clear that these actuarial risk assessment instruments were better at predicting criminal behaviour than professional judgement. Research reviews repeatedly showed that actuarial instruments performed better than clinical or professional judgement when making predictions of human behaviour (Ægisdóttier, White, Spengler et al., 2006; Andrews, Bonta & Wormith, 2006; Grove, Zald, Lebow, Snitz Nelson, 2000). The superiority of actuarial prediction has been extended to such diverse offender groups as mentally disordered offenders (Bonta, Law & Hanson, 1998) and sex offenders (Hanson & Bussière, 1998). As a consequence of the predictive superiority of actuarial risk assessments, more and more correctional jurisdictions adopted this type of assessment for classifying offenders and assigning differential supervision practices. The period between 1970 and 1980 saw a movement from what Bonta (1996) called first generation assessment (i.e., professional judgements of risk) to second generation assessment (i.e., actuarial assessment of risk).
The second characteristic of second generation instruments is that the non-criminal history items that sample behaviour also tend to be of a historical nature (e.g., history of drug abuse). Criminal history and other factors that sample past behaviour are treated as static, immutable risk factors. This poses a major shortcoming for second generation risk assessment because the scales do not account for offenders changing for the better. Rather, the possibilities are: a) an individual's risk level does not change (if one scored positive for a history of drug abuse that risk factor will always remain no matter if he/she has learned to abstain from drugs, or b) an individual's risk increases (e.g., new offences are committed and criminal history scores increase). There is no possibility for diminished risk (to be fair, some of the second generation instruments do have items that can account for some diminished risk, however the number of items represent a minority of items in these risk scales).
Recognizing the limitations of second generation risk assessment, research began to develop in the late 1970s and early 1980s on assessment instruments that included dynamic risk factors (Bonta & Wormith, 2007). Criminal history items remained an important feature of the third generation, risk assessment instruments, as they should. However, in addition to items on criminal history and other static items such as past substance abuse there were dynamic items investigating the offender's current and ever changing situation. Questions were asked about present employment (after all, one can lose a job or find a job), criminal friends (one can make new friends and lose old friends), family relationships (supportive or unsupportive), etc. The third generation risk instruments were referred to as "risk-need" instruments and a few of these were also theoretically based (e.g., the Level of Service Inventory-Revised; Andrews & Bonta, 1995).
Third generation risk instruments were sensitive to changes in an offender's circumstances and also provided correctional staff with information as to what needs should be targeted in their interventions. There is now evidence that changes in the scores on some of these risk-need instruments are associated with changes in recidivism (Andrews & Robinson, 1984; Arnold, 2007; Motiuk, Bonta & Andrews, 1990; Raynor, 2007; Raynor, Kynch, Roberts & Merrington, 2000). Evidence of dynamic validity, that is, changes in risk scores signal changes in the likelihood of committing a new offence, is immensely important for correctional programs and the staff charged with managing offender risk. The third generation risk-need instruments offer a way of monitoring the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of programs and supervision strategies. Furthermore, because dynamic risk factors (e.g., substance abuse, employment, companions) are embedded in third generation instruments correctional staff can be guided in directing intervention to these dynamic risk factors. Successfully addressing these dynamic risk factors would contribute to an offender's reduction in risk (Bonta, 2002).
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