JCP Risk Assessment – 2006.1

JJIS Version

The JCP Risk Assessment was developed by the Oregon Juvenile Department Directors’ Association (OJDDA) for use by Oregon County Juvenile Departments to identify risk and protective factors that put youth at risk of delinquency, and to use this information to guide and update decisions regarding level and type of intervention and/or supervision.

What’s new on the JCP Risk Assessment 2006.1?

One instrument instead of three: The new JCP combines the initial assessment, JCP Risk Reassessment, and JCP Program Evaluation (formerly JCP Interim Review for Prevention Services) in one instrument. Users will be asked to select the type of assessment they want to complete, and the appropriate questions for that type of assessment will be activated. All earlier versions of JCP assessments will be retired when JCP 2006.1 is released.

Valid and reliable: The JCP Risk Assessment 2006.1 has been validated using a sample of 5,993 Oregon youth offenders. Each item, and the instrument as a whole, was tested to make sure that each predicted re-offending for all youth, and for sub-groups of youth (males and females, older and younger youth, minorities and whites, lower and higher risk youth). Thirty of the most predictive and uniformly reliable indicators were used to create a new 30 item risk assessment that includes six scored protective factors.

New “Attitudes, Values, and Beliefs” risk domain: A risk domain has been added which identifies attitudes, values, and beliefs that are highly correlated with future criminal behavior. NOTE: Only the original five risk domains count in determining eligibility for JCP funded services.

Automatic calculations:  JJIS now pre-fills any item that can be automatically calculated, which will save user time and reduce user error.

Risk classification: Risk categories have been revised to improve the accuracy of risk classification. The risk levels are automatically calculated by JJIS based on the total risk score. The default classification includes three risk levels (high, medium, and low). An alternative risk classification has four risk levels (high, medium-high, medium, and low). Counties will be assigned the default unless they submit a Help Request to JJIS to use the “alternative.

Overrides: The risk level can be adjusted by override. It is recommended that an override be permitted when a youth, in the opinion of the assessor, is at greater or lesser risk than the risk score indicates, or requires a higher level of supervision (e.g. sex offenders can have low risk scores, but for public safety reasons may require a higher level of supervision than the risk score indicates). It is suggested that overrides be monitored, and be limited to 15% or fewer of assessments. Note: A specialized sex offender assessment instrument should be used to determine the likelihood that a sex offender will commit a new sex crime.

Links to case planning: The new JCP 2006.1 also supports the development of case plans by linking each indicator to a case planning domain.

Violence indicators: Six items on JCP 2006.1 predict future violent behavior. JJIS automatically provides notification if one of these six indicators are checked. Youth with violence indicators should be considered for further assessment using a specialized instrument for assessing potential violence.

Graphs of Assessment Results: Worker, client/family, and change graphs have been added.