The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) worked with researchers at Florida State University to validate the risk assessment instrument they use with youth in their custody, which is the Residential Positive Achievement Change Tool (R-PACT).165 For the validation study, they reviewed a sample of 4,735 youth who
completed their residential placements in FY2010–11. Researchers determined that the R-PACT accurately predicts which youth will reoffend and that these predictions are accurate across all demographic subgroups such as gender and race/ethnicity. Through their analyses, they were also able to determine which domains assessed with the R-PACT were best able to predict future reoffending (e.g., prior offending, social skills, and relationships with peers) and which were less predictive (e.g., mental health). The researchers recommended that DJJ use the R-PACT to guide reentry decisions, focusing on the domains most predictive of reoffending and those that could be impacted by matched system interventions.
The National Youth Screening and Assessment Project (NYSAP) and Models for Change Initiative provide useful guidelines that can help juvenile justice systems determine the best use of screening or assessment tools at each decision point, as described in Table 1:168
Another key factor that juvenile justice systems need to consider when determining which assessments to use and when to employ them is that assessment results are not fixed, due to the rapid developmental changes that occur in adolescence. A youth’s classification as being at high risk of reoffending can quickly change, even during the course of a trial or a brief stay in detention, as a result, perhaps, of receiving needed services or changes in family circumstances. Therefore, agency staff should account for the ongoing development of youth at specific ages when administering assessments, and systems should never treat the results of one assessment as a permanent predictor of future offending.171
Instead, juvenile justice systems should require reassessments at regular intervals (e.g., every six months) and/or at certain progress points in the youth’s case plan, such as upon return to the community, or after certain life milestones. Reassessments can help agencies to track treatment progress, identify new or intensified challenges to reducing youth’s risk of reoffending, and adjust supervision levels and the nature
TABLe 1. GUIDeLIneS FOR THe USe OF SCReenInG VS. ASSeSSMenT TOOLS
Intake Diversion Pre-adjudication Adjudication Post-disposition corrections
Decision Point Tool Type guidelines
Screening tool
Screening tool
Screening tool
N/A
Full risk and needs assessment tool
Agencies are advised to use screening tools with all youth at intake to quickly identify youth who may require additional assessment for risk of reoffending or behavioral health needs. Agencies can choose to use a risk screening instrument, which is the most objective tool available, to inform diversion decisions. If a juvenile justice system decides to use a screening tool at this point, policies must be established to protect youth from self-incrimination.169
Two factors merit consideration when making pre- adjudication detention decisions: failure to appear and public safety. Many systems have created their own brief screening tools to measure risk of reoffending at pre- adjudication phase.170 A different tool is needed to assess
the likelihood of failure to appear in court.
Neither a brief nor full risk assessment tool should be used at this point. Adjudication is only about whether youth violated the law—not whether they will in the future. Juvenile justice systems should use comprehensive risk and needs assessments that address static and dynamic risk factors on all youth at the disposition phase to guide supervision and case planning.
and intensity of services youth receive accordingly. A number of validated risk assessment instruments are approved for this purpose.172 Juvenile justice systems should institutionalize reassessment practices through
policy, balancing the need to selectively use staff time and resources and not “over-assess” youth while ensuring that the use of assessments is as flexible and dynamic as youth’s development.173
3. Engage youth and their families to assess risk, need, and responsivity. Assessment experts and
experienced juvenile justice systems stress that, for the most accurate and useful results, staff should not conduct needs assessments as if they were administering a questionnaire. Instead, assessors should engage youth, families, and other members of youth’s caregiver network in conversations designed to elicit a full and honest picture of youth’s strengths and needs. This approach can help assessors to identify the underlying triggers for individual youth’s delinquent behavior. For example, knowing that a youth has a substance use problem is only half the story—understanding that this problem is driven by associations with a negative peer group can help systems tailor services in specific ways that will measurably impact future offending. Juvenile justice systems are also advised to supplement risk and needs assessment results with the use of additional assessments to identify responsivity factors not captured by most stand-alone tools. For example, research indicates that many youth are likely to have experienced trauma prior to their involvement in the juvenile justice system.175 Trauma can interrupt or redirect cognitive development and increase the likelihood
of psychological impairment that, if unaddressed, will limit youth’s responsivity to services, no matter how well matched to their dynamic risk factors.176 Thus, juvenile justice systems should use assessments
for specialized populations such as youth who have committed sex offenses,177 as well as to assess for less
transparent challenges, such as trauma, commonly experienced by youth in the system, when developing case plans to facilitate positive changes in behavior.
4. Select and appropriately use validated behavioral health screening and assessment tools . The
first step in identifying youth in the juvenile justice system who have mental and substance use disorders is the implementation of standardized screening tools at key system decision points. As with risk screening, these screenings are a brief process—typically lasting between 20 and 30 minutes—that helps juvenile justice systems to quickly identify those youth who are likely to have a mental or substance use disorder.178
The most widely used and rigorously validated mental health screening tool for youth in the JJS is the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument (MAYSI-2).179 The Global Appraisal of Individual Needs—Short