POST-PRISON SUCCESS PREDICTION A Preliminary Florida Study

This preliminary study attempts to prepare the foundations for obtaining a valid predictive measure for the chance of “success” for a prisoner leaving the Florida penal system. A random sample of 200 Florida prison system releases is analyzed from several vantage points Parolee versus expvee popubtion differences are studied and a variant of the California Base Expectancy Scale is constructed for Florida. To overcome the weakness of utilizing the same predictive model for a broad spectrum of prisoners, an attempt is made to describe homo geneous subpopulations. Through the use of cluster analysis, one such subpopulation is identified and predictive ability for this group is shown to be greatly increamd.