Judicial Guide to the Structured Decision Making®
Model in Juvenile Justice
NOVEMBER 2015
Table of Contents
Structuring Decisions for Better Juvenile Justice Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Engaging Leaders and Stakeholders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
The Detention Assessment Instrument: Safer Communities and More Successful Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Risk Assessment for Targeting Resources and Interventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Using the Actuarial Risk Assessment to Help Youth Succeed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Helping, Not Harming: Making Disposition Decisions for Youth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Assessing Youth Strengths and Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Keeping Justice-Involved Youth in the Community: A Win-Win Situation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
The Graduated Response Approach: Three Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Keys of a Graduated Response Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Structuring Intake and Release Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
To Learn More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
© 2015 by NCCD, All Rights Reserved
NCCD promotes just and equitable social systems for individuals, families, and communities through research, public policy, and practice.
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Structuring Decisions for Better Juvenile
Justice Outcomes
The Structured Decision Making® (SDM) model for
juvenile justice, a group of standardized assessments
developed by the National Council on Crime and
Delinquency (NCCD), identifies the risk levels of
system-involved young people and helps judges
determine their best disposition options in court. These
assessments also help courts place youth in the least
restrictive environments needed to ensure public safety.
Working Together to Improve
Outcomes
NCCD works to improve outcomes for society’s most
at-risk individuals, including youth involved in the
juvenile justice system. NCCD has helped to highlight
the importance of using data-driven assessments and
shifting the ways in which systems engage with young
people.
The table included here shows how the positive
youth development model differs from the traditional
juvenile justice approach.
The Structured Decision Making®
Model
The SDM model for juvenile justice is an evidence- and
research-based system that identifies key points in
the life of a juvenile justice case and uses structured
assessments that are valid, reliable, equitable, and easy
to use to achieve the goals of juvenile justice reform.
The model includes several assessments.
Traditional Juvenile Justice Versus Positive Youth Development*
Traditional Juvenile Justice
Positive Youth Development
Role of youth in community
Target of change
Agent of change
Role of youth in justice system
Client
Contributor
Mission of juvenile justice system
Public safety
Community wellness
Key strategy of juvenile justice
Control youth behavior
Connect youth with social and
developmental resources
Target of juvenile services
Youth problems and deficits
Youth strengths and assets
Purpose of service delivery
Supervision and control
Attachment and engagement
*Butts, J., Mayer, S., & Ruth, G. (2005). Focusing juvenile justice on positive youth development. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, Chapin Hall Center for
Children.
1
A detention assessment instrument identifies the
likelihood of a youth committing a future offense
during a specific and short period of time: before
the adjudication hearing. This information helps
determine whether a secure setting should be
considered while a youth awaits an initial custody
hearing.
• An actuarial risk assessment helps identify
where to allocate resources and target
interventions following adjudication. The risk
assessment helps determine the disposition of a
case and whether a youth can be safely diverted
from the juvenile justice system.
• A disposition matrix is used to promote
consistency and equity in dispositional
recommendations according to the severity of
the current offense and risk of future offending.
This ensures that youth in similar situations will
have similar and appropriate decisions at their
case disposition.
inform ongoing supervision and case planning
decisions relevant to the care and well-being of
juvenile justice system–involved youth.
• A graduated response approach uses research
in adolescent brain development and behavior
modification to guide probation officers and case
managers on appropriate and available sanctions
and rewards for youth currently being supervised
in the community.
• An intake and release assessment helps
staff decide how to group youth to ensure the
protection of all detained youth.
For young people who come into contact with the
juvenile justice system, their entire involvement
should be intentionally planned to support overall
system goals. The SDM model in juvenile justice
represents a commitment to a juvenile justice system
that works—for communities; for juvenile justice
workers; and, most importantly, for the young people
whose lives it touches.
• After a disposition has been identified, a
strengths and needs assessment helps to
•
Detention assessment
instrument
Pre-Disposition,
Post-Adjudication
•
•
Actuarial risk assessment
Disposition matrix
•
•
•
Pre-Adjudication
2
Strengths and needs
assessment
Graduated response
approach
Intake and release decisions
Post-Disposition
Engaging Leaders and Stakeholders
Agency leadership and stakeholder engagement
are crucial to the successful development and
implementation of a decision-making process that
supports system reform.
Reduced Bias in Decision Making
Who?
Enhanced Implementation Capacity
Agency leadership refers to agency staff members
who are responsible for making policy and related
decisions and are knowledgeable on policy, the
implementation process, and overall system-reform
goals.
Leadership and stakeholders who are engaged in
and committed to the decision-making process are
more likely to build implementation capacity by
proactively troubleshooting implementation issues,
thus contributing to more successful system-reform
activities.
Stakeholders are individuals or groups who are
interested in or affected by the decisions being
made. Stakeholders should represent a wide range
of perspectives, experiences, and roles relevant to
the decisions at hand. They should reflect diversity in
terms of race, ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status,
education, and other important characteristics.
Examples of stakeholders in the juvenile justice
system are judges, prosecutors, law enforcement,
public defenders, community representatives, and
independent court staff, among others.
What Are the Benefits?
Transparency in Decision Making
Engagement with leadership and stakeholder groups
promotes transparency in decision making and
reduces doubt and uncertainty—and ultimately loss of
faith and trust—in the implementation process.
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Engaging a diverse group of leadership and
stakeholders creates a decision-making process that is
less biased and centered in stakeholder consensus.
Relationship Building and Collaboration
Relationship building and collaboration are expected
to be natural by-products of leadership and
stakeholder groups coming together and pooling their
collective knowledge and diversity of perspectives to
work toward system reform.
What’s Next?
Keeping agency leaders and stakeholders involved
in the assessment development and implementation
processes is essential. Collaboration with leadership
and stakeholders is part of the long-term, ongoing
plan to achieve successful outcomes for youth,
families, and the community.
The Detention Assessment Instrument:
Safer Communities and More Successful Youth
Agencies can safely reduce the use of detention and
generally strengthen the juvenile justice system
through the use of a valid detention assessment
instrument (DAI).
When detention is focused only on youth who are at
high risk of committing a new offense before their
court date, or of missing their court date, then juvenile
justice resources can be allocated to where they are
needed most.
4
What Is the DAI For?
The DAI is part of a process of evaluating each arrested
youth to determine if he or she is safely able to
stay at home or in the community while awaiting a
detention or adjudication hearing. The DAI produces
one of three recommendations: release, release with
conditions, or detain.
The DAI weighs the nature of the current offense,
the youth’s legal history and court status, and other
pending adjudications. The DAI also considers
mitigating and aggravating factors that reflect values
around community safety and youth success.
How Does the DAI Work?
The DAI is a structured tool that assigns points for
each item on the tool. The total number of points
corresponds to a final recommendation for that youth.
After reaching the tool’s recommendation, a worker
uses professional judgment to make a final decision
for the youth.
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The items on the DAI correspond with the statistical
likelihood of committing a new offense before the
court date or failing to appear. Items should be
considered for inclusion, weighted, and tested on
local and state data, existing research, and stakeholder
engagement.
When the DAI is used with fidelity, detention decisions
are more likely to be accurate (so that youth who
pose an immediate threat to safety are detained,
and those who do not can be released or released
with conditions), reliable (consistent across workers,
time, and geography), and equitable (achieves similar
outcomes across different sub-groups).
Risk Assessment for Targeting Resources and
Interventions
Use and Purpose
Risk assessment is a core practice
to promote safer communities and
more successful youth.
Risk assessment is a decision-support process to help
juvenile justice systems identify the system-involved
youth on whom they should focus. It helps to answer
“who?” questions based on identifying which youth
are most likely, on a statistical basis, to later reenter
the juvenile justice system.1
Risk assessment also helps answer the “who not?”
question. Given all the youth who are referred to
the system, which youth are unlikely to reenter the
juvenile justice system? For these youth, interventions
can actually increase their risk of reentry.
Allocate Resources for Impact
Because risk assessment helps structure decision
points around which youth to focus on, it allows
juvenile justice systems to allocate resources to where
they are most needed and to target interventions to
where they have the most potential to prevent future
system reentry of youth. Risk assessment is a core
practice to promote safer communities and more
successful youth.
What It Is Not
Risk assessment does not say much about “why?”
questions. It does not suggest why some youth are
more likely to get in trouble again or why some youth
are more likely to reenter the juvenile justice system
later. These are good research questions but not
questions the risk assessment addresses.
In addition, risk assessment does not say much about
“how?” questions. Risk assessment gives an indication
of which youth to worry about but not which
interventions are most appropriate or what kind of
service plan should be adopted for a particular youth.
Once the risk assessment answers the “who?”
question by identifying a young person’s likelihood
of reentering the system, systems should develop
individualized case plans. These case plans should
be informed by the young person’s risk score; his/her
strengths and ambitions; input from family members;
and the available local resources, including but not
1
Reentry refers to a youth’s return to the juvenile justice system, such as at intake.
6
limited to positive youth development approaches
aimed at building stronger pro-social attachments and
therapeutic interventions like multisystemic therapy,
family functional therapy, and cognitive behavioral
therapy.
In developing plans, it is important to keep in mind
that young people who pose a low risk should, on the
whole, receive limited or court-ordered interventions.
Out-of-home placement should be reserved for youth
who score high risk and for whom no other viable
community-based alternative is available.
“Who is most likely to reenter the
juvenile justice system?”
“Who meets our eligibility criteria
for programmatic interventions?”
“To whom should we allocate our
limited resources?”
Method
Risk assessments are most commonly actuarial
tools, similar to those used to set car insurance rates.
Using available data, rigorous statistical analysis, and
predictive analytics approaches, the factors most
associated with juvenile justice system reentry are
identified. It is important that local data and practices
are incorporated into the process. Youth with more risk
factors score higher, and youth with fewer risk factors
score lower. Thresholds then classify youth according
to low, moderate, or high risk.
7
Risk assessment instruments must be evaluated against
set criteria to ensure that they function appropriately.
These testing criteria are:
• Validity, to test for accuracy;
• Reliability, to test for consistency;
• Equity, to test for fairness; and
• Utility, to test for how useful the instrument is in
practice.
Practice and Impact
Risk assessment works as a decision support—not
to shape decisions a particular way but to ensure
that decision makers are more likely to “get it right.”
Research has demonstrated that decisions lead to
better outcomes when they are structured. Individual
decision makers still maintain discretion to use
professional judgment and consider the uniqueness of
each individual youth.
Using the Actuarial Risk Assessment to
Help Youth Succeed
The Right Tool for the Situation
Imagine you are a parent whose child comes to you
with cold symptoms. You must decide whether to
let the cold run its course or intervene with a natural
or medical therapy. One tool you may use to help
determine your course of action is a thermometer. If
your child has a high temperature, you may decide
that the situation is more urgent, warranting a trip to
the doctor for further diagnosis and treatment. On
the other hand, if your child’s temperature is within a
lower or normal range, you may choose to let the cold
run its course and let your child recuperate at home.
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Using the Risk Assessment in
Juvenile Justice
In a similar way, the risk assessment assists in making
the best decision for each youth, based on his/
her level of risk. The risk assessment helps juvenile
justice systems identify the system-involved youth
on whom they should focus. The tool helps to classify
those youth who are most likely to be involved in
future adjudications, allowing agencies to know how
intensively to intervene, or what, if any, intervention
is necessary—the same way a thermometer helps you
decide how best to help a child who has come down
with a cold.
How Does the Risk Assessment
Work?
To identify youth most likely to be involved in future
offending, the risk assessment classifies youth into
groups (e.g., low, medium, or high risk) based on a set
of characteristics, or risk factors, that have a statistical
relationship with future adjudication. Youth with
higher risk scores are at higher risk of re-adjudication,
while youth classified as medium risk should have
lower re-adjudication rates, and youth classified as low
risk should have the lowest rates of re-adjudication.
Why Does the Risk Assessment Help?
The risk assessment helps prevent future juvenile
offending by allocating its juvenile justice resources to
9
where they can be most effective. It can guide positive
interventions toward youth most likely to be readjudicated and helps avoid over-serving youth who
are unlikely to ever be adjudicated again.
Research has demonstrated that structured decisions
lead to better outcomes than those based on worker
judgment alone. Individual decision makers still
maintain discretion to use professional judgment and
consider the uniqueness of each individual youth.
Risk assessments are a core practice to promote safer
communities and more successful youth.
Helping, Not Harming: Making Disposition
Decisions for Youth
A disposition matrix is a tool designed to structure
decisions about the most appropriate level of
supervision and custody for adjudicated youth at
the time of case disposition. Through the use of
disposition matrices, judicial and probation officers are
able to make more informed decisions that enhance
practices and policies for safer communities and
more successful youth. This approach allows for the
allocation of resources to where they will be most
efficient and effective.
A disposition matrix organizes sanctions and programs
by risk level and offense severity. It places youth
along a continuum of disposition options, typically
including secure out-of-home placements, placement
alternative programs, probation, intensive services like
multisystemic therapy, and other community options.
Disposition matrices leverage valid risk assessments.1
Research has shown that a valid risk assessment
instrument accurately classifies people into groups
based on a set of characteristics, or risk factors, in
order to identify cases most likely to be involved in
A disposition matrix brings a
greater degree of consistency,
reliability, and equity to the
assessment and decisionmaking process.
future offending. The classification levels then show
differential reentry rates at the various risk levels.
Youth classified as low risk are typically placed in
community or diversion programs with minimal
supervision or are diverted from the system entirely.
For youth classified as moderate risk, more structured
community programs while under probation
supervision may be appropriate. Youth classified as
high risk may receive intensive probation supervision
with appropriate alternative-to-placement services or
may be placed out of the home.
Informed Decision Making
A disposition matrix brings a greater degree of
consistency, reliability, and equity to the assessment
and decision-making process. Once an agency has
implemented an accurate and objective disposition
matrix, decision makers have access to relevant youth
information, disposition options, and corresponding
disposition decision recommendations. This ensures
that youth with similar characteristics will have
similar and appropriate decisions made at their case
dispositions.
1
For more information on validity, see the handout titled “Understanding Validity of Risk Assessment Instruments,” or this document:
http://www.nccdglobal.org/sites/default/files/publication_pdf/fire_study_results_graphs.pdf
10
Research has shown that disposition matrices lead
to a more efficient use of dispositional resources and
improved outcomes (e.g., lower reentry) by matching
dispositions to the specific types of youth for which
they were designed.
Data and Analysis
The second and possibly less obvious purpose of
a disposition matrix is to give agencies a platform
from which to evaluate the practice of disposition in
their jurisdiction by collecting accurate data on each
youth, the disposition recommendation, and the
actual disposition decision. This information allows
for comparisons of trends over time, across units, and
according to local goals and objectives.
Example
In the following example, the disposition matrix
outlines the recommendations for each combination
of risk and current offense. One simple analysis
can compare how frequently each disposition type
occurred for each risk level. A similar analysis could
compare dispositions by offense type or by offense
type and risk level.
Table 1: Disposition Matrix Risk Level
Offense
High
Medium
Low
Violent
Level 3
Level 2 or 3
Level 2
Serious
Level 2 or 3
Level 2
Level 1 or 2
Minor
Level 2
Level 1 or 2
Level 1
Table 2: Disposition Analysis Risk Level
Disposition
Low
Medium
High
Level 3
65%
31%
3%
Level 2
27%
47%
26%
Level 1
7%
23%
70%
The comparison between the disposition
recommendation and actual disposition decision can
help identify patterns in practice and reasons for these
patterns. These data allow agencies to analyze youth
classification distributions, examine outcomes by
classification, understand dispositions and reoffending
by risk, and see the relationship between disposition
decision and reentry. This information is key to
validating and revising the disposition matrix over
time.
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Assessing Youth Strengths and Needs
The strengths and needs assessment (SNA) is designed
to help determine both the strengths and specific
needs of young people. Once a youth’s disposition
has been established, the SNA helps identify how to
intervene and provide services to a particular youth
by shaping the youth’s service plan. Together, the SNA
and service plan support youth in making successful
transitions from adolescence to early adulthood
by encouraging them to develop useful skills and
competencies and to build stronger relationships with
pro-social peers, families, and communities.
The Best Way to Approach Strengths
and Needs
The SNA was developed using a combination of
the two leading models of strengths and needs
assessments in juvenile justice.
The “risk/needs” model assumes that recidivism is
predictable, criminogenic needs should be assessed
and targeted through intervention and treatment,
and levels of service should correspond to a youth’s
risk of recidivism (i.e., higher-risk youth should receive
higher-level interventions).
The second model, called “positive youth
development,” is a resilience-based intervention
guided by the assumption that most children and
youth manage to thrive and develop even in the
presence of multiple environmental stresses (Butts,
Mayer, & Ruth, 2005) as long as they are attached to
a variety of social resources that facilitate healthy
development.
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Benefits of Using the SNA
The SNA blends factors from the risk/needs model
and the positive youth development model for a more
comprehensive assessment of the strengths and needs
of juvenile justice–involved youth. The assessment
includes items that bear a statistical relationship to
recidivism as well as other items that are pertinent to
an agency’s goals. The SNA enables juvenile justice
professionals to effectively identify youth strengths
and needs and, in turn, better target services to youth.
Keeping Justice-Involved Youth in the Community:
A Win-Win Situation
Confining youth in secure out-of-home placements has
destructive effects on young people, their families, and
their communities. Instead of helping young people
regain a positive path, confinement interrupts positive
development, increases the risk of future recidivism,
separates families, and costs communities money. There
are better solutions that benefit everyone.
Why Doesn’t Confinement Work?
Removing young people from the supports of their
families and communities to place them in a facility
has negative effects on growth and development.
Brain science has shown that young people continue
to mature until about age 25. Confinement negatively
affects the development of maturity, impulse control,
and resilience—all of which are necessary for learning
and making good decisions.
Confinement continues to hurt youth even after they
are back in the community. Detained youth are less
likely to complete high school and more likely to
be incarcerated later in life. One recent study found
that exposure to peers in group settings including
probation, counseling, and confinement raised teens’
odds of being arrested as adults by a factor of 14.
Juvenile detention also affects young people’s future
needs for education, housing, and jobs, as arrest
records follow youth for decades.
What Works for Justice-Involved
Youth?
Alternatives to detention, especially communitybased positive youth development approaches, offer
better chances for success for young people and their
13
Young people who have been
sentenced to juvenile prison were
37 times more likely to be arrested
again as adults, compared with
similar youth who were either not
caught or not put into the system.
communities. In addition, programs consistent with
evidence-based practices—like those that promote
positive mentor and community connections—or
therapeutic approaches in the community also
increase the likelihood of positive outcomes. A 2013
study found that youth charged with a crime but not
placed in detention were 20% more likely to graduate
from high school and almost 20% less likely to be
involved in the adult criminal justice system by age 25,
compared to youth placed in detention.
Who Benefits?
When young people succeed, we all benefit. Taxpayers
and governments save money; communities are safer;
families can remain intact; and young people have the
chance to grow, succeed, and contribute.
The Graduated Response Approach: Three Benefits
A graduated response approach (GRA) promotes
positive behavior change, offers support to workers,
and is critical for a safer community.
Benefits to Youth
Research clearly shows that probation alone does
not have a positive impact on a youth’s likelihood of
future offending. Youth who receive a disposition of
probation alone are, on average, 14 times more likely
to be rearrested than youth with similar characteristics
who were not adjudicated.
Research also shows that youth in detention have an
even higher likelihood of future offending compared
to youth who are not adjudicated. Youth who receive
a disposition of placement are 37 times more likely to
be rearrested than non-adjudicated youth with similar
characteristics.
Chance of Rearrest
37X
To be successful, probation and detention should
be used to facilitate development of pro-social skills
and relationships. This is why a GRA focuses on
protective factors and building new social assets for
youth. By incentivizing youth to engage in pro-social
activities that enable their growth and development,
we help them engage in positive behaviors, build
their connection with the community, desist from
offending, and make a more successful transition
to adulthood. A GRA is designed to help youth in
the juvenile justice system become accountable,
responsible, and competent members of society.
Benefits to Workers and Juvenile
Justice Agencies
Traditionally, it has been the worker’s responsibility to
fill many roles: resource provider, mentor, advocate,
advisor, officer, compliance monitor, and violation
enforcer. Workers can thus face a significant burden
as they navigate tough decisions concerning
compliance and non-compliance with court orders;
the significance of probation violations; the frequency,
appropriateness, and availability of incentives,
rewards, and sanctions; and the purpose and
appropriate use of detention.
14X
A GRA allows workers and youth to work together to
identify incentives, behaviors, and sanctions that are
meaningful to the youth. It provides a framework for
2X
Brief Experience
14
Probation
Placement
Source: Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. (2012); and Steinberg, L. (2014). Age of opportunity: Lessons from the new science of adolescence.
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
workers to reward good decision making and positive
behavioral changes, as well as respond to problematic
behaviors without unnecessarily detaining youth.
A GRA benefits juvenile justice agencies by
maintaining a structure for data collection in the
quality assurance process. Tracking youth progress,
along with the rewards and sanctions applied, will
provide information to the agency, the courts, and the
community about the effectiveness of the GRA and
supervision strategies.
Benefits to the Community
Since its creation more than 100 years ago, the
goal of juvenile probation has been to promote a
safer community while supporting youth in their
development and transition to adulthood.
15
Research shows that the juvenile brain is still
developing and is hardwired to reward impulsivity,
which can lead to poor decisions. Research also
tells us that incentives and rewards are effective
tools in helping to re-shape behaviors and decision
making. An incentive- and reward-based approach
to probation encourages positive development of
the juvenile brain to make better decisions in the
community.
Research indicates that to reduce future offending,
support workers and juvenile justice agencies, and
establish a safer community, it is necessary to have
an approach to juvenile probation—such as a GRA—
that is centered on positive youth development and
incorporates meaningful incentives.
Keys of a Graduated Response Approach
The purpose of a GRA is to help shape a youth’s
behavior. The use of incentives/rewards helps increase
desired behaviors, and the use of sanctions helps
decrease undesirable behaviors.
A GRA addresses the needs of youth, system workers
and stakeholders, and communities.
• For youth, it ensures that incentives and
sanctions are derived from best practices and
implemented consistently across workers.
• The approach helps workers focus case plans
on the most important strengths and needs for
each youth, and it allows integration with other
tools and best practices implemented by the
department.
• A GRA allows departments to conduct ongoing
evaluation of its effectiveness through data
collection.
• Finally, communities are safer when justiceinvolved youth learn and use strategies and
skills taught through the GRA for long-term,
sustainable success.
Characteristics of a Successful GRA
In order for any graduated response approach to be
effective, the approach must be:
• Timely: Youth learn best when rewards or
sanctions are provided immediately after the
identified behavior occurs. Both the specific
rewards or sanctions used and the process for
implementing them need to be prompt and
timely.
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• Developmentally appropriate: A GRA considers
many different factors (e.g., age, developmental
level, learning style, culture, and mental health
issues). The agreed-upon behaviors, rewards, and
sanctions must address each individual youth’s
unique needs and situation.
• Integrated: A GRA should complement and be
integrated with other strategies and tools, such
as the risk assessment, the strengths and needs
assessment, effective practices for community
supervision, and other services that are part of
the overall supervision plan.
• Individualized: Rewards and sanctions can only
shape behavior if they are meaningful to the
youth. Through a GRA, the supervising worker
and the youth identify positive and negative
behavior together and then respond in a way
that is meaningful to the youth.
• Evolving: The approach needs to allow for
increasing expectations of pro-social and other
positive behaviors as they are learned and
demonstrated. Similarly, if undesirable behaviors
escalate, it may be necessary to adjust the
sanctions proportionally.
• Equitable: Parameters must be fair and equitable
to promote consistency across workers and
across youth. More importantly, the approach
must be developed to promote equity when
applied to varying demographic groups and
to eliminate the unintended consequences of
implicit and structural bias.
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Building on Strengths, Learning
Over Time
Research on social learning, youth development, and
best practices shows that youth in the juvenile justice
system are capable of learning new skills, exhibiting
new behaviors, and establishing new pro-social
relationships. For many youth, the link between their
behavior and consequences, whether positive or
negative, is not well-established. A GRA facilitates
learning by teaching youth that they have control over
both their behavior and its consequences.
Structuring Intake and Release Decisions
Intake
Key Consideration
As noted in other parts of this guide, secure
placement has been shown to have serious,
long-term negative consequences for young
people. Thus, secure placement should only
be considered as a last resort and only for
young people who have committed the most
serious and violent offenses. Additionally,
youth should be housed in the least restrictive
environment possible. Secure placement
considerations should be determined by
using a detention assessment or a valid risk
assessment and a disposition matrix.
Purpose
The intake and release process has three components:
intake, case monitoring, and release and early
release. The goal of structuring intake and release
decisions is to prioritize safety while taking positive
youth development and behavior into consideration.
Structuring intake and release decisions helps to
ensure the following.
1. Youth, staff, and the community are safe.
2. Youth needs are matched with appropriate
programs.
3. Youth are housed in the least restrictive manner
possible.
4. Youth are joined with the community as soon as
possible.
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An intake decision typically is made to determine
where the youth will be housed during his/her time in
custody. Traditionally, this decision is made by using
the youth’s current offense and some amount of the
youth’s prior history.
NCCD approaches intake as the first of three decision
points in the intake and release process. Because
a youth’s current offense is used to determine the
disposition recommendation, intake decisions
regarding custody and housing levels should be
informed by factors related to the youth’s safety,
needs, and vulnerability.
The intake decision should be informed by the youth’s
risk of violent behavior in order to determine security
level and stratification and to ensure that the youth is
housed in the least restrictive manner possible. Intake
should also be informed by the youth’s identified
needs in order to match the youth with services and
appropriate programs. Finally, intake should include
consideration of the youth’s likelihood of being
victimized to ensure that the youth is housed in an
environment where he/she will be safe.
Case Monitoring
The youth’s progress must be monitored throughout
his/her time in the facility. It is also important to
reassess risk of violence, identified needs, and
likelihood of victimization. Youth should receive
services that target their most current identified
needs and should have the opportunity, through their
response to services and positive behavior, to move to
a less-restrictive placement or a lower housing-level
classification.
Release and Early Release
Structuring decisions around release helps to ensure
youth are prepared for a successful transition back into
their community, sometimes earlier than their planned
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release date. Release and early release decisions
should consider the youth’s response to services
and programs, progress in education, and available
community connections.
Customized Intake and Release
Assessments
NCCD works with agencies to structure intake
and release decisions by developing customized
assessments for each of the three phases above. NCCD
and the agency identify specific goals and decisions
being made regarding intake, housing, and release.
We work together to determine the best structure for
these decisions and develop a customized assessment
with information and data the agency already has.
NCCD leverages research on best practices, positive
youth development, adolescent brain development,
and our national expertise on risk and needs to guide
assessment development and to improve long-term
outcomes for individuals, families, and communities.
To Learn More
For more information, please contact Dr. Jesse Russell, Chief Program Officer,
at [email protected]; visit our website, www.nccdglobal.org; or call (800) 306-6223.
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