Supervision trajectories of male juvenile offenders: growth mixture modeling on SAVRY risk assessments

Abstract

Background: Structured risk/need assessment tools are increasingly used to orientate risk reduction strategies with juvenile offenders. The assumption is that the risk/need items on these tools are sufficiently sensitive to measure changes in the individual, family and/or contextual characteristics of juvenile offenders. However, there is very little research demonstrating the capacity of these tools to measure changes in juvenile offenders. Congruent with the developmental and life-course criminology theories (DLC) the objective of this study is to explore the existence of heterogeneous trajectories of juvenile offenders across the juvenile justice system as measured through five empirical risk/need areas based on the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY), one of the most widely applied risk assessment tools for juveniles.Methods: This longitudinal study included 5205 male juvenile offenders who transitioned through the Catalan juvenile justice system between 2006 and 2014. During intervention they received at least two, and a maximum of seven, consecutive SAVRY risk/need assessments over an 18-month period. The heterogeneity of latent class trajectories was explored through growth mixture modeling (GMM). The trajectory class membership was linked to covariates through multinomial logistic regression analyses.Results: Through GMM three to four heterogeneous trajectories, with high quality of separation, were identified in each of the risk/need areas. The trajectories with low risk/needs (45-77% of the sample) remained low and presented a very limited increase in risk/needs during the 18-month period. The high risk/need trajectories (20-37% of the sample) showed a limited decrease or no change. Between 5 and 13% of the sample had large reductions in their risk/ needs levels, and approximately 5% showed a large increase in risk/needs. Conclusions:In line with the DLC theories this study shows that trajectories on criminogenic risk/needs can be heterogeneous and indicate distinct rates of change over time. The results of this study also may suggest a limited sensibility to measure change over time of SAVRY's risk and protective items. Suggestions to improve the sensitivity of measuring change over time, such as shorter time frames or future-oriented time frames for the scoring of the items, are offered.

Understanding Changes in Youth Offenders’ Risk Profiles: A Latent Transition Analysis

“…There was a small group of youth probationers who had an increase in risk and needs after the probation orders (i.e., Escalators). This comprised about 4.1% of the sample, which corresponded well with the findings from Hilterman and colleagues (2018) who found that 4% of their youth offender sample was rapid escalators. A closer analysis showed that a longer probation order may lead to a higher risk of being Escalators.…”

“…This finding is also similar to the study on parolees in the United States by Hochstetler and colleagues (2016); they found that about 33% were in the Consistently High-Risk group. In another study on male youth offenders, Hilterman and colleagues (2018) found that 23% of their sample was high persistors. However, it is unclear whether the risk levels are comparable among these studies, although these groups referred to youth with the highest risk/needs in each respective setting.…”

“…Other studies combined the two approaches to identify subgroups of trajectories in different risk areas. In a longitudinal study with 5,205 male youth offenders, Hilterman, Bongers, Nicholls, and Nieuwenhuizen (2018) identified three to four transition trajectories for each of the following five areas: antisocial behavior, family functioning, personality, social support, and treatability. Taking antisocial behavior for example, majority of the sample (72.8%) were mild persistors with low levels of antisocial risk throughout the 18-month period.…”

Predicting youth reoffending after incarceration: added value of protective factors and heart rate variability

“…The Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) (Borum et al, 2002), a risk assessment instrument which has been developed to determine violence risk, was used. While the SAVRY has been developed for use in adolescents, several studies support the use of the SAVRY in offenders up to 25 years old (Hilterman et al, 2018;Kleeven et al, 2020;Vincent et al, 2019). The SAVRY is composed of 24 risk factors in three risk domains (historical scale, social/contextual scale, and individual/clinical scale), and a protective factor domain including six protective factors (for an overview of the SAVRY items see Table 1).…”

Longitudinal studies in forensic child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health: CAPMH thematic series 2018/2019

“…In the second paper Ed Hilterman et al [10] present a longitudinal study on 5205 male juvenile offenders from the Catalan juvenile justice system. These youths received multiple SAVRY risk/need assessments over time.…”