- Section 3: Assessment
- Key Topics for The Assessment
Section
- Part I: Broad Assessment Issues
- Part II: Style and Process
- Part III: Pre-Disposition Report
- Part IV: Psychosexual Evaluation
- Part V: Risk Assessment
- Defining Assessment
- To estimate or determine the significance or importance of something(s)
- To observe or monitor
- To evaluate
- Examples of Key Stakeholders
- Forensic evaluators
- Specialized treatment providers
- Supervision officers
- Teachers, other school officials
- Release decisionmakers
- Parents/caregivers
- Family therapists
- Victim therapists
- Juvenile and family court judges
- Ongoing Process, Not An Event
- Risk and needs change
- Assess critical variables over time
- Promotes informed, timely responses
- What types of assessment
data are needed to make informed decisions about juvenile sex offenders?
- Examples of Important Assessment
Data Points
- Individual variables
- Level of risk
- Sexual history and adjustment
- Mental health difficulties
- Substance abuse
- Maltreatment history
- Intellectual, cognitive functioning
- School performance
- Family variables
- Parent/caregiver capacity
- Parental risk factors
- Violence in the home
- Environmental variables
- Peer influences
- Community influences
- Access to victims, victim safety issue
- Assess Strengths and Assets
- Individual
- Family
- Environmental
- Assessment Data Sources
- Interviews with youth
- Collateral interviews
- Comprehensive records
- General psychological measures
- Offense–specific measures
- Physiological tools
- Goals Influence Data Needs
- Inform disposition or sentencing
- Identify supervision needs
- Determine supervision level
- Identify treatment needs
- Measure treatment progress
- Assess treatment/supervision compliance
- Collaboration is Vital
- Different system actors, different data
- Information–sharing is needed
- Potential statutory/policy restrictions
- Releases of information
- Memoranda of understanding
- Summary
- Key to informed decisionmaking
- Everyone has a role
- Ongoing process vs. single event
- Multiple data sources
- Collaboration, information–sharing
- Style and Approach are Important
- Goal is to obtain complete, accurate information
- Process and strategy may facilitate or hinder disclosure
- Focus on rapport
- Contextual Variables
- Stigma, shame, and guilt
- Intensely personal nature of questions
- Overwhelming court processes
- Cultural norms and influences
- Invitations to Responsibility
- Shift from coercive, shame–based, and confrontational models
- Emphasizes respectful and therapeutic engagement of clients
- Highlights the concept of choice
- Assists clients with identifying their own motivations to change
- Motivational Interviewing: Guiding Principles
- Express empathy
- Develop discrepancy
- Roll with resistance
- Support self–efficacy
- Additional Interviewing
Tips
- Simple vocabulary
- Open–ended questions
- “Successive approximation”
- Resist challenging minimizations or contradictions
- Positive reinforcement
- Pre–Disposition Report
- Often first opportunity to assess comprehensively
- Informs decisionmaking for judges
- Provides baseline data
- Should follow youth throughout system
- Foundation of case management
- Overarching Considerations
- Accountability and rehabilitation
- Victim impact, victim needs
- Community safety interests
- PSR/PDR: Critical Elements
- Offense information
- Prior delinquency
- Youth functioning
- Family functioning
- Aggravating andmitigating factors
- Victim impact
- Sexual, non–sexual risk levels
- Appropriate placement options
- Recommendations
- Child and Adolescent Strengths
and Needs— Sexual Development (CANS–SD)
- Structured needs assessment
- Multiple domains assessed
- Functioning
- Risk behaviors
- Mental health needs
- Care intensity and organization
- Caregiver capacity
- Strengths
- Characteristics of sexual behavior
- Recommendations
- Specialized programs, services, interventions
- Suggested placement, level of care
- Special conditions of supervision, if applicable
- Fines, restitution
- Best course of action should be offered
- Juvenile Delinquency Guidelines:
Improving Court Practice in Juvenile Delinquency Cases
- Desktop Guide to Good Juvenile
Probation Practice
- Psychosexual Evaluation
- Not identical to general psychological evaluation
- Requires specialized
training and experience
- Forensic psychology
- Adolescent mental health
and juvenile justice
- Sex offender management
- Sexually abusive youth
- Ideally Conducted Post–Adjudication
- Ethical and legal questions may arise pre-adjudication
- Presumption
of guilt
- Fifth amendment/self-incrimination
- Ultimate issue/guilt or
innocence
- Best suited for informing disposition recommendations, case
planning
- Informed Consent
- Explain your role
- Review processes, procedures
- Outline risks, benefits, consequences
- Explain confidentiality limits
- Allow for questions
- Commonalities Across Evaluations
- Clinical interview with juvenile and parent/caregiver
- Thorough review
of records
- General psychological testing
- Intellectual functioning
- Personality
adjustment
- Emotional/psychological functioning
- Unique Elements
- Sex offense-specific assessment tools
- Juvenile sex offense-specific risk
assessment
- Potential use of physiological tools
- Comprehensive sexual
history
- Sexual History
- Sexual learning
- Sexual development
- Early sexual experiences
- Masturbation
- Fantasies, “turn–ons”
- Explicit materials
- Age–appropriate, consensual experiences
- Victimization history
- Perpetration behaviors
- Potential paraphilias
- Examples of Psychosexual
Assessment Measures
- Adolescent Sexual Interest Cardsort
- Adolescent Cognitions Scale
- Hunter, Becker, Kaplan, & Goodwin, 1991
- Multiphasic Sex Inventory–Juvenile Version
- Nichols & Molinder, 1986, 2001
- Child and Adolescent Needs and Strengths–Sexual Development
- Physiological Tools
- Penile plethysmograph
- Viewing time (Abel Screen)
- Polygraph
- Plethysmography Cautions
- Limited research with youth
- Developmental factors may influence reliability/validity
- Arousal patterns not firmly established with youth
- Intrusive procedure, questionable stimuli
- Programs Using Plethysmograph
with Juveniles
- Viewing Time Cautions
- Little published research
- Available evidence is mixed
- Programs Using Viewing Time
with Juveniles
- Polygraph Utilization Trends
in Community–Based Programs
- Polygraph Cautions
- Little research, especially with juveniles
- Reliability and validity potentially influenced by developmental
factors
- Practice Guidelines: Physiological
Measures with Youth
- Not for guilt or innocence determinations
- Not as a sole basis for key decisions
- Specially trained users
- Safeguards against self–incrimination
- Informed consent
- Best reserved for older youth
- Summary and Recommendations:
Psychosexual Evaluation
- Attitude toward treatment, amenability
- Level of accountability
- Degree of psychosexual disturbance
- Special needs
- Environmental suitability
- Strengths and assets
- Risk level
- Range of treatment needs
- Suggested level of care/least restrictive placement options
- Risk Assessment
- Increasingly influential
- Effective and efficient allocation of resources
- Consistency, structure, equity, and objectivity
- Common Uses
- Detention hold or release decisions
- Level of custody or placement at disposition
- Community supervision level
- Sex offender registration and community notification
- Risk Factors: General Delinquency
or Youth Violence
- Age at first referral or adjudication
- Prior referrals or adjudications
- Nature of current charge
- Prior aggression
- Association with delinquent peers
- Social isolation
- History of abscondence
- Substance abuse
- Family instability, poor parent–child relations
- History of maltreatment
- School problems
- Risk Assessment Tools: General
Delinquency
- Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory
- Structured Assessment of Violence Risk for Youth
- (Bartel, Forth, & Barum, 2002)
- Michigan, Washington, and Wisconsin Risk Instruments
- Risk Prediction Challenges
for Juvenile Sex Offenders
- Low base rates of recidivism
- Limited number of well–designed studies on recidivism for youth
- Suggested Risk Factors for
Juveniles: Sexual Recidivism
- Family instability, poor parent–child relations
- Association with delinquent peers
- Social isolation
- Antisocial orientation, psychopathy
- Deviant arousal
- Sexual preoccupation, compulsivity
- Non–familiar victims
- Pro–offending attitudes
- Impulsivity
- Treatment non–compliance, termination
- Risk Assessment Approaches
- Unstructured clinical judgment
- Empirically–guided
- Actuarially–based
- Limitations of Actuarials
- Moderate—not high— predictive accuracy
- Cannot identify actual risk of recidivism for specific individuals
- Cannot affirmatively determine who will or will not reoffend
- Promising Tools for Juveniles
- Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment Protocol–II
- (Prentky & Righthand, 2003)
- Estimate of Risk of Adolescent Sexual Offense Recidivism
- J–SOAP–II Subscales
- Sexual drive/preoccupation
- Impulsive, antisocial behavior
- Intervention
- Community stability/adjustment
- ERASOR Domains
- Sexual interests, attitudes, behaviors
- Historical sexual assaults
- Psychosocial functioning
- Family environmental functioning
- Treatment
- Programs Using J–SOAP–II
or ERASOR
- Concluding Comments
- Assessment is ongoing and multidisciplinary
- Multiple sources of data
- Importance of style and approach
- No magic bullets
- No absolutes
- Key to informed decisionmaking
