Youth Offender Care Needs Assessment Tool (YO-CNAT): An actuarial risk assessment tool for predicting problematic child-rearing situations in juvenile offenders on the basis of police records.

Abstract

In the juvenile justice system, much attention is paid to estimating the risk for recidivism among juvenile offenders. However, it is also important to estimate the risk for problematic child-rearing situations (care needs) in juvenile offenders, because these problems are not always related to recidivism. In the present study, an actuarial care needs assessment tool for juvenile offenders, the Youth Offender Care Needs Assessment Tool (YO-CNAT), was developed to predict the probability of (a) a future supervision order imposed by the child welfare agency, (b) a future entitlement to care indicated by the youth care agency, and (c) future incidents involving child abuse, domestic violence, and/or sexual norm trespassing behavior at the juvenile's address. The YO-CNAT has been developed for use by the police and is based solely on information available in police registration systems. It is designed to assist a police officer without clinical expertise in making a quick assessment of the risk for problematic child-rearing situations. The YO-CNAT was developed on a sample of 1,955 juvenile offenders and was validated on another sample of 2,045 juvenile offenders. The predictive validity (area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve) scores ranged between .70 (for predicting future entitlement to care) and .75 (for predicting future worrisome incidents at the juvenile's address); therefore, the predictive accuracy of the test scores of the YO-CNAT was sufficient to justify its use as a screening instrument for the police in deciding to refer a juvenile offender to the youth care agency for further assessment into care needs.

The development and validation of the Youth Actuarial Care Needs Assessment Tool for Non-Offenders (Y-ACNAT-NO)

“…Recently, an actuarial risk screening instrument (Youth Offender Care Needs Assessment Tool; YO-CNAT) was developed to provide Dutch police officers an indication of the risk for future care needs of juvenile offenders, which is needed for the decision to refer these juveniles for further assessment [ 4 ]. This instrument was specifically developed for young offenders and solely based on information available in the Dutch police system, so that it can be used by Dutch police officers who, in general, do not have a clinical background.…”

“…The items comprising the YO-CNAT are presented in Table 1 . Van der Put and Stams [ 4 ] showed that the discriminatory accuracy of this instrument ranged between acceptable (with an AUC value of .701) and good (with an AUC value of .745) for predicting different types of future care needs. The YO-CNAT was specifically developed for screening juvenile offenders, but police officers also come into contact with large numbers of juvenile non -offenders, who were involved in a criminal incident but not in the role of a suspect.…”

“…a Different categorizations of these two variables are used in calculating the risk for future care needs and are not presented here. See [ 4 ] for more information on the categories.…”

“… The YO-CNAT is an initial screening instrument that is developed for estimating the risk for future care needs (i.e., the probability of future problematic child-rearing situations) of juvenile offenders [ 4 ]. This instrument can only be used by the Dutch police since it was designed for implementation in the Dutch police system.…”

“…Initially, it may seem that the YO-CNAT [ 4 ] can also be used for estimating the risk for future care needs of juvenile non-offenders, but three important issues can make this problematic. First, not all predictor variables that are part of the YO-CNAT apply to juvenile non-offenders, since these juveniles have never been recorded in the police system as having the role of a suspect.…”