CENTER FOR SEX OFFENDER MANAGEMENT
The Effective Management of Juvenile Sex Offenders in the Community
A Training Curriculum

 A Project of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice

 

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Section 3: Assessment
2 Hours

TOPIC: ASSESSMENT

Part III: Pre–Sentence/Pre–Disposition Reports

General Issues

Up to this point, we have focused on fairly broad assessment issues and principles. Now let’s “drill down” a bit and consider a specific type of assessment that occurs early in the juvenile justice process and which tends to be fairly influential in the management of juvenile sex offenders. The pre–sentence/pre–disposition report, also known as a pre–disposition or pre–sentence investigation, or probation investigation, is commonly used to assist juvenile and family court judges with decisionmaking at the point of disposition. Generally, it is conducted by an officer of the juvenile court.

If it is well–crafted, the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report offers one of the first opportunities for key stakeholders to obtain a comprehensive picture of the juvenile sex offender and his or her family. As such, the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report provides important baseline data from the youth’s point of entry into the system, against which changes can be measured as he progresses through the management process. Ideally, then, the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report will follow the juvenile throughout the system and, in combination with other types of assessments, will be used to assist with the development of supervision case plans and treatment plans.

Fundamental to this assessment are three overarching considerations that must be carefully balanced: the needs of the juvenile, the victim, and the community.

This is best accomplished by ensuring that the juvenile court officers who are responsible for completing the report have clear, policy–driven guidance. Therefore, procedures for developing pre–sentence/pre–disposition reports should outline the specific elements to be assessed and the methods by which the assessment information or data should be collected, and create a standard format to be used for reporting.²³

Key Components of the Pre–Sentence/Pre–Disposition Report

Let’s talk for a few minutes about the key elements that should be included in a pre–sentence/pre–disposition report in order to make the report the most useful to the juvenile or family courts and other stakeholders.²⁴ Many of these will be familiar to you, as we identified a number of them when we brainstormed important assessment data points earlier.

• For example, it will be important for the juvenile court officer to include a detailed description of the offense, including the official police or social service accounts. In addition, the report should include both the juvenile’s version of the offense and the victim’s statements, as well as the reaction of the juvenile’s parent or caregiver.
• The court officer conducting the report should also attempt to explore the level of responsibility that the youth is willing to accept for his behavior, and whether or not excuses are offered or blame is placed elsewhere.
• Other important considerations are the youth's trauma history, the level of remorse that the youth expresses, and if the youth is able and willing to recognize the potential impact on, or harm caused to, the victim and others.
• As is the case with any good assessment, the report should provide a summary of the juvenile’s history—including education, health, mental health, prior delinquency, substance abuse, and peer affiliations. And remember, any identified strengths or assets in these areas should be included in the report as well, because these strengths may be very helpful to the judge when considering the ultimate disposition.
• And of course, family functioning must be assessed—such as the ability of the parents or caregivers to provide adequate supervision and structure, the level of stability in the home, and parental risk factors such as criminal history, substance abuse, mental health difficulties, or family violence. Again, attention to strengths and assets is a must.

Since we are talking about the importance of assessing both strengths and assets of the juvenile and his or her family, I’d like to share with you an assessment tool that can be particularly helpful when developing a pre–sentence/pre–disposition report—the Child and Adolescent Strengths and Needs – Sexual Development (CANS–SD).²⁵

The CANS–SD is a structured needs assessment tool designed specifically to be used with sexually abusive youth. It is very comprehensive—covering many or most of the critical domains that must be assessed when developing a pre–sentence/pre–disposition report—and, therefore, it provides a consistent method for ensuring that the assessor considers each of these elements. And it doesn’t just include factors that are limited to the youth. Rather, the CANS–SD includes family variables as well. And as the name suggests, the CANS–SD includes a review of the strengths and assets of the juvenile and his or her family.

What’s really helpful about this tool is that it can be used by supervision officers or other non–clinicians (as well as clinicians). And it can be used as a repeated assessment tool to review changes over time and make adjustments to case management plans accordingly.

Let’s return to the critical components of the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report.

• You will recall that an overarching consideration for the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report involves specific attention to the needs and interests of victims. Therefore, it is important to include the victim impact statement, a discussion of any injuries or losses, desires for restitution or reparation, and any ongoing safety concerns.²⁶
• The pre–sentence/pre–disposition report should also include a review of any potential aggravating or mitigating factors that the juvenile court should consider when making the disposition. For example, if a significant degree of force or gratuitous violence was used—well beyond what was necessary in order to gain the victim’s compliance—and considerable physical injuries were inflicted, this might be included as an aggravating factor. This is particularly critical if the nature of the charge or petition does not adequately reflect the nature and seriousness of the offense, which sometimes happens when plea negotiations are made.
• On the other hand, there may be potential mitigating factors that should be considered by the court, such as a particularly young offender, or one who suffers from significant mental health difficulties or developmental disabilities, or a youth who was coerced by an adult to participate in the offense. These kinds of factors may have impacted the juvenile’s culpability or competency, and without making note of these issues, key decisionmakers may have an incomplete view of vital contextual variables.
• The report should also include an assessment of the juvenile’s risk for reoffending, both in terms of sexual and non–sexual recidivism. And it is especially important that the assessor clearly specifies which tools were used to assess these types of risk, respectively. A little bit later, I will refer you to a couple of general risk assessment tools and will highlight two promising risk assessment tools specifically designed for use with juvenile sex offenders: the Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol–II (J–SOAP–II)²⁷ and the Estimate of Risk of Adolescent Sexual Offense Recidivism (ERASOR).²⁸ Again, we’ll talk about those in a little bit more detail later. It is important to specify the type of risk assessed and the tools used, because the risk factors that researchers have found to be related to general recidivism among juveniles may be different than those factors that predict sexual recidivism for juveniles.²⁹
• Beyond the assessment of risk, the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report should include the identified rehabilitation needs of the youth, making note of the type and intensity of services that may be most beneficial.
• And finally, after considering all of the critical issues, the court official who is responsible for completing the assessment should include a disposition recommendation.

Pre–Sentence/Pre–Disposition Report Recommendations

When recommendations are offered to the court, there should be no question in the judge’s mind about why they were recommended. In other words, any and all recommendations should be fully supported by the facts contained in the body of the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report. So, if you cannot provide a reasonable basis for a specific recommendation, then it probably should not be included.

To be maximally useful to the court, the recommendation section of the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report should include any identified needs that the youth has for specialized programs and services, such as sex offense–specific treatment. In addition, there should be a statement about the required level of custody of care, using the least restrictive alternative that will ensure community safety.

In some jurisdictions, recommendations may also include suggested special conditions of supervision for the juvenile sex offender, should he be allowed to remain in the community. We will talk more about potential specialized conditions for juvenile sex offenders when we get to the section on community supervision. And if orders to pay court costs, other fines, or restitution are warranted, these should be specified in the recommendation section as well.

Overall, it is important that the pre–sentence/pre–disposition report outlines the course of action that is believed to be the ideal disposition, regardless of whether the resources are currently available—so if necessary, gaps in services should be noted and secondary recommendations should be offered.³⁰

Practical Resources

As we wrap up this section, I’d like to draw your attention to a couple of resources that can be particularly helpful for court officers who are responsible for conducting pre–sentence/pre–disposition reports.

The first is entitled “Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines: Improving Court Practice in Juvenile Delinquency Cases.”³¹ This best–practices handbook was developed by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, with support from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) of the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs.

Another useful reference is entitled the “Desktop Guide to Good Juvenile Probation Practice,”³² and was produced by the National Center for Juvenile Justice, also through funding from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

Both of these resources offer detailed explanations about key principles and approaches to conducting pre–sentence/pre–disposition reports for juvenile delinquency cases—in addition to a host of other key issues relevant to juvenile court proceedings and strategies. For example, the experts and practitioners who contributed to these resource manuals offer specific information about approaches, standards, and best–practices related to the adjudication process, disposition hearings, post–disposition reviews, intake processes, supervision strategies, and responses to probation/parole violations, to name a few.

Even though neither of these handbooks is designed specifically to address juvenile sex offenders, both provide some information about effective responses to juvenile sex offenders in their respective sub–sections about special populations. Overall, these publications can be invaluable guidebooks that offer very specific and practical examples and suggestions, and I would encourage you to take full advantage of them.