About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

70 Fed. Probation 49 (2006)
Validation of the Risk and Resiliency Assessment Tool for Juveniles in the Los Angeles County Probation System

handle is hein.journals/fedpro70 and id is 137 raw text is: September 2006 49 Valiao of th Ris and a Reiiec Asesmn Too RISK AND NEEDS assessment has been central to correctional operations for decades. Assessment not only helps predict offender future behavior, it can also help organizations allocate staff workload and resources. Before the late 1970s, judgments about offender risk were often subjective, based on experience or the intuition of cor- rectional practitioners (Solomon & Camp, 1993). Objective systems began to appear in the 1970s and offered the promise of more efficient and systematic means of classifica- tion for offender risk and management than clinical intuition alone. The National Insti- tute of Correction's model Risk Classifica- tion initiative, undertaken in the early 1980s, introduced many jurisdictions to objective case classification (Jones, Johnson, Latessa, & Travis, 1999). Today, risk and classifica- tion tools are used in a myriad of criminal justice decisions-from pretrial release to parole supervision for both juvenile and adult populations. More recent third generation instruments include criminogenic needs of the offender that should be addressed in order to reduce recidivism (Bonta, 1996). One of the most critical issues for assess- ment instruments is their predictive validity. An instrument should be able to accurately predict which offenders will and will not recidivate. Whether an instrument is selected from a number of commercially available products (such as the Level of Service Inven- tory and Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions) or devel- oped by a jurisdiction, it should be validated on the local population. The current article discusses the validation of the San Diego Risk and Resiliency Checkup on a sample of juvenile offenders in Los Angeles County. Background Although the Los Angeles County Proba- tion Department routinely gathered back- ground information on youths entering its juvenile system, no validated risk assessment was being used through the early 2000s. As part of a court settlement regarding services provided to minority youth in the county, the department was required to allocate resources for the administration of a validat- ed risk and needs instrument to its juvenile probationers. Of particular importance was that the instrument work well for youths of all ethnicities. Working with a committee representing the parties of the court settlement, research- ers assisted in identifying and eventually validating a risk assessment instrument to be used in the county. After surveying instru- ments currently in use in the United States, we determined that items used in risk and needs instruments generally fell into one of nine conceptual categories: prior and cur- rent offenses/dispositions, family circum- stances/parenting, education, employment, peer relations, substance abuse, leisure/rec- reation, personality/behavior, and attitudes/ orientation. However, many of the instru- ments that we found in use had not been validated on the populations to whom they were administered, so that we were unable to determine their effectiveness in distinguish- ing high-risk youths from low-risk youths. We identified three instruments that had undergone validation: the Youth Level of Susan Turner University of California, Irvine Terry Fain RAND Corporation Service Inventory (YLSI) (Multi-Health Sys- tems Inc., 1998), the San Diego Risk and Resiliency Checkup (SDRRC) (Little, n.d.), and the Washington Association of Juve- nile Court Administrators Risk Assessment (WSJCA-RA) (Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2004). Each includes mul- tiple items for the conceptual categories we identified, and each offered advantages and disadvantages when compared to the oth- ers. The Department favored the SDRRC, primarily because it could be administered during the intake process. It also preferred the SDRRC's emphasis on positive (protec- tive) factors, whereas most risk and needs assessment instruments primarily focus on risk factors. The remaining settlement par- ties agreed, and the SDRRC was selected as the instrument to be tested. The San Diego Risk and Resiliency Checkup The SDRRC consists of 60 items in six conceptual categories, half of which are risk factors and half protective factors. The conceptual categories are delinquency, edu- cation, family, peer relations, substance use, and individual factors. Each conceptual cat- egory includes five protective factors and five risk factors. Each item is scored as yes, no, or somewhat. Scores from the risk and protective subscales are combined into a single resiliency score. The SDRRC also includes additional protective factors and additional risk factors that are not included in the resiliency score, but which may be used to tailor an individual's supervision. A

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most