Using Latent Class Analysis to Identify Need Typologies and Recidivism Likelihood Among Women Who Perpetrate Violence.

Understanding the heterogeneity of women who engage in violence is critical to provide effective treatment and reduce the likelihood of recidivism. Existing typologies of women who engage in violence have been created using mixed methodological approaches; the field would benefit from replication using a quantitative clustering method-latent class analysis (LCA)-as it is arguably more objective than methods used to date. A LCA was conducted using archival data involving 3,773 justice-impacted women in Western Canada to identify unique subgroups of women who perpetrate violence.