ASSESSING THE RISK OF JUVENILE SEX OFFENDERS USING THE INTENSIVE PAROLE SEX OFFENDER DOMAIN

7-3-2008 National:

Introduction
The Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration (JRA) within the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services contracted with the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (Institute) to determine if an empirically valid risk assessment for sexual reoffending could be developed using data from the Intensive Parole Supervision Assessment (IPSA). This report summarizes the findings.

The IPSA, implemented by JRA in 1998, is modeled after the Washington State Juvenile Court Assessment. Prior to implementation, JRA added a sex offender domain to the IPSA. The items for this domain were proposed by therapists who work with juvenile sex offenders. Appendix A contains the sex offender domain of the IPSA.

Seven items are included in the sex offender domain. Four items include three to six sub-items, each with a sub-item score. The sub-item scores are summed to produce item-level scores. The item scores are then summed to produce a domain score.

Since 1999, the sex offender domain of the IPSA has been administered to two groups of juveniles. The parole population sample consists of Level 1 and Level 2 juvenile sex offenders already on intensive parole.1 The parole release sample consists of Level 3 juvenile sex offenders who were administered the IPSA when released from a JRA institution from 1999 through 2002.

Because juvenile sexual reoffending rates are low, we rely on a five-year, rather than the more typical 18-month, recidivism follow-up period. Recidivism is defined as a juvenile committing an offense that results in a conviction.2 The follow-up period for both groups starts on the date the juvenile is released from a JRA institution. ..For the rest of the paper.. by Washington State Institute for Public Policy