Predicting recidivism with the Personality Assessment Inventory in a sample of sex offenders screened for civil commitment as sexually violent predators.

We examined the ability of scores from the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey, 1991) to predict postrelease (M = 4.90 years follow-up) arrests in a sample of 1,412 sex offenders. We focused on scores from 4 PAI measures conceptually relevant to offending, including the Antisocial Features (ANT), Aggression (AGG), and Dominance (DOM) scales, as well as the Violence Potential Index (VPI). Scores from several PAI measures demonstrated small- to medium-sized effects in predicting violent nonsexual recidivism, nonviolent recidivism, and sex offender registry violations, with the AGG scale being the strongest (d = 0.50 for violent nonsexual recidivism, d = 0.55 for sex offender registry violations) and most consistent predictor of recidivism.