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Juvenile Justice - Risk Assessment

  • document cover for A Comparison of Risk Assessment Instruments in Juvenile Justice

    A Comparison of Risk Assessment Instruments in Juvenile Justice

    This study examined the validity, reliability, equity, and cost of nine juvenile justice risk assessment instruments. Though many researchers and practitioners believe that risk assessment is critical to improving decision making in the juvenile justice system, the range of options currently available makes the selection of the most appropriate instrument for each jurisdiction a difficult choice. This study was designed to provide a comprehensive examination of how several risk assessments perform in practice (p. 1). 

    Findings are reported: 

    • according to...

  • document cover for NCCD Compares Juvenile Justice Risk Assessment Instruments: A Summary of the OJJDP-Funded Study

    NCCD Compares Juvenile Justice Risk Assessment Instruments: A Summary of the OJJDP-Funded Study

    The results from a study of eight risk assessments used for determining which justice-involved youth are low-, moderate-, or high-risk for future delinquency are reviewed. Sections comprising this summary are: introduction; comparison of juvenile justice risk assessment instruments by agency, risk assessment model, and effectiveness; inter-rate reliability testing; validity and equity testing; and implications for practice. Risk assessment should be a simple process that is easily understood and articulated. This study’s findings show that simple, straightforward, actuarial approaches to risk...

  • OJJDP MPG Literature Review: Risk/Needs Assessments for Youths (2015)

    This publication covers: risk and needs assessments limitations, definitions, theoretical foundation, two approaches to administering risk/needs assessments: the actuarial approach and the structured professional judgment approach, examples, and outcome evidence.

  • Accuracy and Fairness for Juvenile Justice Risks Assessments (2017)

    Risk assessment algorithms used in criminal justice settings are often said to introduce “bias”. But such charges can conflate an algorithm’s performance with bias in the data used to train the algorithm and with bias in the actions undertaken with an algorithm’s output. In this paper, algorithms themselves are the focus. Tradeoffs between different kinds of fairness and between fairness and accuracy are illustrated using an algorithmic application to juvenile justice data. Given potential bias in training data, can risk assessment algorithms improve fairness, and if so, with what consequences for accuracy? Although statisticians and computer scientists can documents the...

  • A Review of the Validity of Juvenile Risk Assessment Across Race/Ethnicity (2018)

    The review suggests that in general, risk assessments do a good job in predicting recidivism across racial/ethnic groups for diverse populations inside and outside the United States. However, there is still some room for improvement concerning the assessment of risk and needs for ethnic minorities. In addition, while there are some studies that do not report the predictive validity of risk assessment scores across race/ethnicity, risk assessments overall seem to be a promising effort to correctly classify and/or identify juveniles who are at greatest risk for future recidivism.