The Effective Management of Juvenile
Sex Offenders in the Community
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
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Defining Assessment
• To estimate or determine the
significance or importance of
something(s)
• To observe or monitor
• To evaluate
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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
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Ongoing Process, Not An Event
• Risk and needs change
• Assess critical variables over time
• Promotes informed, timely
responses
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What types of assessment data are needed to
make informed decisions about juvenile sex
offenders?
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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 issues
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Assess Strengths and Assets
• Individual
• Family
• Environmental
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Assessment Data Sources
• Interviews with youth
• Collateral interviews
• Comprehensive records
• General psychological measures
• Offense-specific measures
• Physiological tools
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Goals Influence Data Needs
• Inform disposition or sentencing
• Identify supervision needs
• Determine supervision level
• Identify treatment needs
• Measure treatment progress
• Assess treatment/supervision compliance
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Collaboration is Vital
• Different system actors, different data
• Information-sharing is needed
• Potential statutory/policy restrictions
• Releases of information
• Memoranda of understanding
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Summary
• Key to informed decisionmaking
• Everyone has a role
• Ongoing process vs. single event
• Multiple data sources
• Collaboration, information-sharing
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Style and Approach are Important
• Goal is to obtain complete, accurate
information
• Process and strategy may facilitate or
hinder disclosure
• Focus on rapport
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Contextual Variables
• Stigma, shame, and guilt
• Intensely personal nature of
questions
• Overwhelming court processes
• Cultural norms and influences
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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
(Jenkins, 1990, 1998)
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Motivational Interviewing:
Guiding Principles
• Express empathy
• Develop discrepancy
• Roll with resistance
• Support self-efficacy
(Miller & Rollnick, 1991, 2002)
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Additional Interviewing Tips
•Simple vocabulary
•Open-ended questions
•“Successive approximation”
•Resist challenging minimizations or
contradictions
•Positive reinforcement
(see, e.g., Lambie & Robson, 2006; McGrath, 1990; Miller & Rollnick, 2002; Rich, 2003)
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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
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Overarching Considerations
• Accountability and rehabilitation
• Victim impact, victim needs
• Community safety interests
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PSR/PDR: Critical Elements
•Offense information
•Victim impact
•Prior delinquency
•Sexual, non-sexual
risk levels
•Youth functioning
•Family functioning
•Aggravating and
mitigating factors
•Appropriate
placement options
•Recommendations
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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
(Lyons, 2001)
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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
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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
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Ideally Conducted Post-Adjudication
• Ethical and legal questions may arise preadjudication
• Presumption of guilt
• Fifth amendment/self-incrimination
• Ultimate issue/guilt or innocence
• Best suited for informing disposition
recommendations, case planning
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Informed Consent
• Explain your role
• Review processes, procedures
• Outline risks, benefits,
consequences
• Explain confidentiality limits
• Allow for questions
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Commonalities Across Evaluations
• Clinical interview with juvenile and
parent/caregiver
• Thorough review of records
• General psychological testing
• Intellectual functioning
• Personality adjustment
• Emotional/psychological functioning
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Unique Elements
• Sex offense-specific assessment
tools
• Juvenile sex offense-specific risk
assessment
• Potential use of physiological tools
• Comprehensive sexual history
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Sexual History
•Sexual learning
•Explicit materials
•Sexual development
•Age-appropriate,
consensual experiences
•Early sexual experiences
•Masturbation
•Fantasies, “turn-ons”
•Victimization history
•Perpetration behaviors
•Potential paraphilias
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Examples of Psychosexual Assessment
Measures
• Adolescent Sexual Interest Cardsort
•
Becker & Kaplan, 1988
• 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
•
Lyons, 2001
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Physiological Tools
• Penile plethysmograph
• Viewing time (Abel Screen)
• Polygraph
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Plethysmography Cautions
• Limited research with youth
• Developmental factors may influence
reliability/validity
• Arousal patterns not firmly established
with youth
• Intrusive procedure, questionable stimuli
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Programs Using
Plethysmograph with Juveniles
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
community-based
residential
(McGrath, Cumming, & Burchard, 2003)
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Viewing Time Cautions
• Little published research
• Available evidence is mixed
• Fairly promising
(see Abel et al., 1998; Becker & Harris, 2004; Letourneau, 2002)
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Programs Using
Viewing Time with Juveniles
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
community-based
residential
(McGrath, Cumming, & Burchard, 2003)
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Polygraph Utilization Trends in CommunityBased Programs
100%
80%
adult
juvenile
60%
40%
20%
0%
1992
1994
1996
2000
2002
(McGrath, Cumming, & Burchard, 2003)
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Polygraph Cautions
• Little research, especially with
juveniles
• Reliability and validity potentially
influenced by developmental factors
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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
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Summary and Recommendations: Psychosexual
Evaluation
•Attitude toward
treatment, amenability
•Strengths and assets
•Level of accountability
•Range of treatment needs
•Degree of psychosexual
disturbance
•Suggested level of
care/least restrictive
placement options
•Risk level
•Special needs
•Environmental suitability
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Risk Assessment
• Increasingly influential
• Effective and efficient allocation of
resources
• Consistency, structure, equity, and
objectivity
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Common Uses
• Detention hold or release decisions
• Level of custody or placement at
disposition
• Community supervision level
• Sex offender registration and
community notification
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Risk Factors: General Delinquency or Youth
Violence
•Age at first referral or
adjudication
•Social isolation
•Prior referrals or
adjudications
•Substance abuse
•History of abscondence
•Nature of current charge
•Family instability, poor
parent-child relations
•Prior aggression
•History of maltreatment
•Association with
delinquent peers
•School problems
(see, e.g., Cottle et al., 2001; Lipsey & Derzon, 1998)
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Risk Assessment Tools:
General Delinquency
• Youth Level of Service/Case Management
Inventory
•
(Hoge & Andrews, 1996)
• Structured Assessment of Violence Risk for
Youth
•
(Bartel, Forth, & Barnum, 2002)
• Michigan, Washington, and Wisconsin Risk
Assessment Instruments
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Risk Prediction Challenges for Juvenile Sex
Offenders
• Low base rates of recidivism
• Limited number of well-designed
studies on recidivism for youth
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Suggested Risk Factors for Juveniles: Sexual
Recidivism
•Family instability, poor
parent-child relations
•Association with
delinquent peers
•Deviant arousal
•Sexual preoccupation,
compulsivity
•Non-familiar victims
•Social isolation
•Pro-offending attitudes
•Antisocial orientation,
psychopathy
•Impulsivity
•Treatment noncompliance, termination
(see, e.g., Prescott, 2006; Worling & Langstrom, 2006)
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Risk Assessment Approaches
• Unstructured clinical judgment
• Empirically-guided
• Actuarially-based
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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
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Promising Tools for Juveniles
• Juvenile Sex Offender Assessment
Protocol-II
• (Prentky & Righthand, 2003)
• Estimate of Risk of Adolescent Sexual
Offense Recidivism
• (Worling & Curwen, 2001)
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J-SOAP-II Subscales
• Sexual drive/preoccupation
• Impulsive, antisocial behavior
• Intervention
• Community stability/adjustment
(Prentky & Righthand, 2003)
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ERASOR Domains
• Sexual interests, attitudes,
behaviors
• Historical sexual assaults
• Psychosocial functioning
• Family environmental functioning
• Treatment
(Worling & Curwen, 2001)
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Programs Using J-SOAP-II or ERASOR
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
community-based
residential
ERASOR
J-SOAP
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one or both
(McGrath, Cumming, & Burchard, 2003)
52
Conclusion
• Assessment is ongoing and
multidisciplinary
• Multiple sources of data
• Importance of style and approach
• No magic bullets
• No absolutes
• Key to informed decisionmaking
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