NCJ Number
177914
Journal
Criminal Justice and Behavior Volume: 26 Issue: 2 Dated: June 1999 Pages: 251-266
Date Published
1999
Length
16 pages
Annotation
This article develops the thesis that psychology has developed a wide variety of standardized tools and procedures appropriate for use in assessing youth in juvenile justice and correctional systems.
Abstract
The article begins with a discussion of the role of psychological assessments in these systems. The author advises that the role of psychological assessments in the juvenile justice system can best be understood in the context of a decision making process. A basic argument of this article is that many juvenile justice systems use assessment and decision procedures conducive to irrational judgments. On the other hand, mental health providers have available a wide range of standardized assessment instruments and procedures that can be used in assessing youthful offenders, and the use of these will lead to more valid inferences about the client and, ultimately, more appropriate and equitable decisions. The second part of this article profiles major types of standardized psychological assessments relevant to juvenile justice systems. A "psychological assessment" is defined as "any measure used to collect data about an individual and to form an inference about his or her characteristics or circumstances." "Standardized psychological assessments" are those with fixed stimulus, response, and scoring formats and for which normative psychometric data are available. The author discusses the major categories of instruments and their roles in forensic assessments, followed by an overview of implementation models. The article concludes with a summary of arguments for expanding the role of psychological assessments in the juvenile justice system. 80 references