Research and theory on the effects of fair procedures has gained popularity over the past decade. This is understandable given the inherent appeal of these ideas and the supporting evidence. Research suggests that authorities are able to secure compliance from subordinates when they use fair procedures and when they are viewed as legitimate. Unfortunately, empirical studies of procedural justice and legitimacy are hampered by weak measures of key theoretical constructs. The purpose of this study is to examine the measurement properties of procedural justice in a sample of inmates. Results show that a one-factor model of procedural justice fits the data well, though the authors find evidence of a method effect. Results also demonstrate important differences between the use of a summated procedural justice scale and a scale derived from a factor analysis. These findings illustrate the importance of paying careful attention to construct validity in measures of procedural justice.

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Despite being created and validated in the 1970s and 1980s, and widely adopted by many agencies in the United States, including Texas, the Wisconsin Risk Need Assessment Instrument has yet to be examined with a contemporaneous Texas probationer sample. Due to the majority of previous research reporting poor utility, the instrument’s authors proposed a new scoring system for the risk portion of the instrument in 2009 in an attempt to increase the predictive utility. This study examines the original instrument and is the first to examine the proposed reweighted risk scale’s relationship to recidivism with an independent sample of 194 male probationers. Findings revealed that the original risk/need sections and proposed reweighted risk items failed to explain significant variance in recidivism with very few items relating to reoffense. The current results provide further evidence that the Wisconsin Risk Need Assessment should be replaced by other empirically validated risk/need instruments.

Recent findings indicate that including White offenders in the sample biases the predictability of risk and needs assessment instruments. As a result, this study examines the predictability of the Los Angeles County Needs Assessment Instrument (LAC) on a sample of African American and Hispanic juvenile probationers. Given that the extant literature focuses on regression analysis, to the curtailment of error analysis, this study also provides a unique examination of predictive error. The results suggest that the instrument under examination predicts better for Hispanics than African Americans. Of the two minority groups, the needs assessment instrument demonstrated the greatest effect size for Hispanic probationers. The LAC performed 16% better than chance predictions when classifying Hispanic juveniles. The area under the curve value was nonsignificant for African American juvenile probationers. The situating of our research findings, their limitations, suggestions for future research, and policy implications are discussed.Keywords predictive validity, juvenile probation, needs assessment, predictive error, race/ethnicity Despite widely accepted racial/ethnic differences within the United States economic, health, educational, and criminal justice systems, minorities are continuously compared to members of the dominant White majority group in offender assessment validations. In a recent review of forensic risk assessment meta-analyses, Singh and Fazel (2010) concluded that, in cross-racial/ethnic assessment comparisons, the inclusion of White offenders in a sample increases the effect size of the predictive instrument under question, ultimately limiting the ability of the instrument to predict accurately for minority groups. Consistent

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