Access to the women's Offender Personality Disorder Pathway-making criteria more gender-responsive

Area of Science:

• Forensic Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Criminology

Background:

• The Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway offers specialized services for individuals with complex mental health needs linked to serious offending.
• Current OPD Pathway access criteria rely on practitioner judgment and screening tools designed for men, potentially overlooking women's specific needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a gender-responsive identification tool for women's entry into the OPD Pathway.
• To create a more effective and equitable screening process for female offenders requiring specialized mental health services.

Main Methods:

• An exploratory study using cross-sectional secondary data from a Ministry of Justice database of women on licence or in custody.
• Binary logistic regression modeling of existing identification processes and proposed alternative items reflecting women's psychological needs.

Main Results:

• A 16-item screening tool was established with good predictive utility for identifying suitable candidates for the OPD Pathway.
• The tool is practical, automatable, and has been implemented across probation and prison services.

Conclusions:

• The revised screening tool is more gender-sensitive than prior methods for identifying women for OPD involvement.
• The new tool maintains approximate female OPD caseload figures while improving identification accuracy.