Validation of the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool.

Gareth Norris,Gwyn Griffith,Megan West

doi:10.1177/0306624x17752299

Abstract

Evidence suggests that only a small minority of youth offenders will continue their behaviour in the longer term and largely independent of any interventions they may receive (Bateman, 2011; Haines & Case, 2015). Hence, "screening out" this larger low-risk cohort could have a positive impact upon the individual through a reduction in stigmatisation/labelling and free up resources for higher risk clients. This article outlines development of the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool (CYSTEM)-developed and tested to address the two facets of criminality and vulnerability-closely aligned to the eight key risk indicators identified in the Risk-Needs-Responsivity (R-N-R) literature (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). Initial results with two cohorts of 372 young people indicate good convergent and discriminative validity in screening out the lowest level referrals, while also identifying 90% of potential future offenders. More importantly, CYSTEM is able to screen out approximately 35% of the low-risk offenders that are unlikely to require formal evaluation and/or intervention. It is suggested that the streamlining of this process using CYSTEM reduces demand on staff time and decreases the stigmatisation of young people referred for minor offences. Potential improvements to the tool and future developments in statistical risk prediction are also discussed.

Highlights

The predominant assessment metric currently used in Youth Justice is the ASSET system, an actuarial risk assessment protocol that evaluates a range of potential risk factors across twelve domains (Wilson & Hinks, 2011)
This article outlines one such initiative—the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool (CYSTEM)—which is being used to “screen out” low-risk referrals to youth justice services with the aim of diverting young people from formal interventions and reducing caseloads. The creation of this tool was motivated by the need to allocate resources more effectively; using a simple six-item checklist, approximately 30% of referrals can be provided with a “light touch” supervision approach without the need for a full risk assessment
Aside from Baird et al.’s caveat regarding the utility of AUC predictions in this arena, we can be fairly confident that CYSTEM is a tool that can predict offending behaviour by young people and, arguably more importantly, has sufficient capacity to screen out those young people unlikely to require full assessment and/or formal intervention

Summary

Introduction

The predominant assessment metric currently used in Youth Justice is the ASSET system, an actuarial risk assessment protocol that evaluates a range of potential risk factors across twelve domains (Wilson & Hinks, 2011). This article outlines one such initiative—the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool (CYSTEM)—which is being used to “screen out” low-risk referrals to youth justice services with the aim of diverting young people from formal interventions and reducing caseloads. The creation of this tool was motivated by the need to allocate resources more effectively; using a simple six-item checklist, approximately 30% of referrals can be provided with a “light touch” supervision approach without the need for a full risk assessment. The article outlines the testing and validation stages of CYSTEM and the expected utility of this tool in managing caseloads

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Discussion

Conclusion