Evidence-based Practices (EBP) - Principle 1. Assess Risk and Needs
Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument (VPRAI)
This pretrial assessment instrument is a great resource for developing and implementing or retuning such a tool for your agency. This collection contains: “VPRAI Instruction Manual Version 1.2”; and "VA Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument Training".
Overview of Research Findings on Pretrial Risk Assessment and Pretrial Supervision
If you are contemplating the use of another agency’s pretrial risk assessment tool without modification to your own organization’s needs you may want to read this report. The use of pretrial risk assessment and pretrial supervision are examined in this report. Since there has been little to no compatibility found between studies of risk assessment tool utilization, it is suggested that the application of an instrument from one jurisdiction to another probably will not work. The same applies to the...
SOTIPS: Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale
“The Sex Offender Treatment Intervention and Progress Scale (SOTIPS) is a statistically-derived dynamic measure designed to aid clinicians, correctional caseworkers, and probation and parole officers in assessing risk, treatment and supervision needs, and progress among adult males who have been convicted of one or more qualifying sexual offenses and committed at least one of these sexual offenses after their 18th birthday ... SOTIPS item scores are intended to reflect an individual's relative treatment and supervision needs on each risk factor...
Evaluating the Predictive Validity of Risk/Need Assessments: Recommendations for Correctional Agencies and Criminal Justice Researchers
These presentation slides should be read before anyone begins to investigate which risk/needs instrument to use in their agency or organization. Topics covered include: prevalence of structured risk/need instruments; evaluating risk/need instruments; issues in predictive validity meta-analyses; apples and oranges-fundamentally dissimilar instruments; how instrument characteristics impact predictive validity; 12 other critical distinctions among risk/need instruments; black-and-white versus shades of gray-overreliance on binary decision making; irrelevance of binary models in criminal justice settings; burden of proof-statistical support for differences among instruments...