The Effective Management of Juvenile Sex Offenders in the Community

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The Effective Management of Juvenile Sex
Offenders in the Community

• Section 3
• Assessment

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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
• Prior delinquency
• Youth functioning
• Family functioning
• Aggravating and mitigating factors

• Victim impact
• Sexual, non-sexual risk levels
• 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
  pre-adjudication
• 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
• Sexual development
• Early sexual experiences
• Masturbation
• Fantasies, turn-ons

• Explicit materials
• Age-appropriate, consensual experiences
• 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 UsingPlethysmograph with Juveniles
(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 UsingViewing Time with Juveniles
(McGrath, Cumming, Burchard, 2003)
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Polygraph Utilization Trends in Community-Based
Programs
(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
• 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

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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
• 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

(see, e.g., Cottle et al., 2001 Lipsey Derzon,
1998)
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Risk Assessment ToolsGeneral 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
• Social isolation
• Antisocial orientation, psychopathy

• Deviant arousal
• Sexual preoccupation, compulsivity
• Non-familiar victims
• Pro-offending attitudes
• Impulsivity
• Treatment non- compliance, 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

• Moderatenot highpredictive 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
(McGrath, Cumming, Burchard, 2003)
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Conclusion

• Assessment is ongoing and multidisciplinary
• Multiple sources of data
• Importance of style and approach
• No magic bullets
• No absolutes
• Key to informed decisionmaking