Identify risk and protective factors in order to understand what factors may lead to further involvement with the justice system.
An important part of the rehabilitative process is identifying risk protective factors in order to understand what factors may lead to further involvement with the justice system and what factors may help youth get to a place where this involvement is no longer needed.
The Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model can be used by justice practitioners in order to assess the likelihood that a youth will continue involvement with the justice system, what the individual needs in order to lead down a path to success, and what should be done in order to help youth and their families.
A validated assessment tool is one that has been sufficiently evaluated and is shown to adequately predicts what it was intended to predict, in this case, reoffending. The tool your department uses should be validated for the population you serve and can help increase standard decision-making and design effective case plans.[1] As a part of routine practice, risk assessments should be administered for all youth at standard intervals throughout their case. It is also recommended to reassess for risk at the end of the case. All risk assessment scores should be documented for each youth on your caseload. You should be able to use the information recorded to assess change. The department can use it to assess progress as well.
It is important to use professional discretion and pay close attention to ensuring that the use of the tools does not exacerbate negative effects of societal biases toward certain subpopulations. To mediate concerns of bias, is critical to evaluate and treat youth as individuals considering their unique strengths, needs, and cultural associations (NRC, 2013). The Urban Institute identified a set of research informed practices to help this include:[2]
This site frequently refers to the concept of risk and makes distinctions between youth with high-risk (or higher) scores vs. those with low-risk (or lower) scores. It does so because many studies have found strong correlations between assessed risk levels and subsequent outcomes, a finding that generally holds true even among youth of the same race and/or ethnicity.
Yet this research on risk is highly problematic, both conceptually and pragmatically, in ways that exacerbate the justice system’s unequal (and harsher) treatment of youth of color as compared to their white peers. One difficulty arises from the fact that juvenile courts and probation agencies have no way of measuring young people’s actual offending rates but can only measure their rates of rearrest. We know that policing practices and deployment patterns differ greatly across the country and that the experiences of youth of color with police are fundamentally different than they are for white youth. As a result, young people’s likelihood of arrest depends heavily on contextual factors—like race and ethnicity, neighborhood and school—that are beyond their control. By relying on future system involvement (arrest, adjudication or incarceration) as their primary outcome measure, risk assessment instruments essentially take for granted, and therefore help to perpetuate, the cycle of unequal treatment. Often this discriminatory dynamic is exacerbated in the scoring of risk assessment instruments, when risk levels assigned to youth of color can be elevated due to objective factors like “age at first arrest” and “number of prior court referrals” (which, again, are influenced by race and other contextual factors) and to more subjective factors like “attitude toward authority” that may disadvantage youth of color due to unconscious or implicit bias of workers administering the assessment.
This conundrum offers no easy answers. But at a minimum, it demands that juvenile court and probation professionals remain mindful of racial and ethnic disparities, intensify efforts to combat those disparities and refrain from using assessment tools entirely or primarily to justify incarceration or to determine sanctions or supervision levels on probation—as is too often the case today. Instead, risk and needs assessment instruments should be used mainly to identify youth who should be diverted from the system, inform the case planning process and identify opportunities and interventions that can best help young people achieve the goals of probation—accelerating their personal development and encouraging personal growth and positive behavior change that maximize their chances for a safe, happy, law-abiding, productive and fulfilling adulthood.[9]
Components of the RNR model include interventions that focus on high-risk individuals (the higher the risk, the more intervention), their dynamic risk factors (criminogenic needs), and their cognitive abilities.[10] This model specifically focuses on eight central factors:[11]
It is important to ensure that programming addresses the last six factors listed because they are dynamic risk factors, so they can be changed. Programming should also take the first four into special consideration since they are the four factors that are most associated with reoffending.[12] One and two are static factors that need to inform the way you respond to youth. Three through eight are dynamic factors and will form the foundation for setting appropriate and focused goals for the youth.
Once risk factors have been identified, it is also important to determine what protective factors will help lead to the youth’s success. Protective factors, much like risk factors, can belong to the following domains: individual, family, peer, school, and community.[13] The specific factors under these domains can be informed by the existence of protective factors indicators, which are evidence of the existence of a specific factor. For example, if a youth is resilient this can be indicated by having an easy-going temperament and being outgoing.[14]
When identifying protective factors and responsivity, remember to take the youth’s strengths and interests into consideration in order to engage them in their own success. By asking youth what they like to do and what they think their strengths are, you can identify different things that will ensure their success by increasing their responsivity.
Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) in juvenile justice is an approach that relies on research and empirical knowledge to determine what practices and treatments will reduce the further involvement of youth in the juvenile justice system.
EBP is important for probation officers because they are direct care providers that are responsible for the best outcomes possible. If EBPs are not used or are implemented incorrectly, youth’s lives may be negatively impacted and the number of youth under your care can increase because they will continue to be involved in the juvenile justice system.
There are differing ideas about what constitutes an evidence-based practice, but Crimesolutions.gov uses a continuum to rank programs as Effective, Promising, Inconclusive Evidence, and No Effects. Those programs rated as Effective are found to have strong effects when implemented properly, while Promising programs are only supported by some evidence. If you are trying to assess whether or not a practice or program is evidence-based, search Crimesolutions.gov.
Some key evidence-based findings have indicated that programs:[15]
“We, in Pennsylvania, have been in a constant state of implementation of new and best practices. At some point, we need a period of no new initiatives and dedicate our time to refine the best practices that have been implemented. It appears systems always want to focus on the new and best things they are doing, rather than refining the numerous practices implemented.” —JPO Administrator, Pennsylvania
When choosing what programs to implement, make sure that you are targeting the correct population. All programming that is chosen should be shown to be effective for youth. Adult programming cannot always be applied to youth because of their unique needs. Additionally, each youth has his or her own needs, and it is imperative that programming addresses these needs. For example, if the youth you are providing care for does not have substance abuse issues, do not use a program that is intended for substance users. Risk assessments and the principles of the RNR model should be able to provide some of the information that is appropriate when determining programming and effectiveness.
With these practices in mind, other ways to create and assess programs for your community are:[16]
