Criminal Justice

You are the training officer for the Department of Probation, Parole and Correctional Alternatives in the State of Panic. Prepare a lecture that provides a brief introduction to new community supervision recruits about risk and needs assessments. You should begin with why these are important. You should describe various types of risk assessment instruments, evaluate their effectiveness and explain for what purposes and how they will and should be used. Explain how their proper use can protect officers from legal liability. Also, warn the recruits about what criticisms of these assessments they should expect to encounter in the courtroom and from offenders.

ANSWER

Lecture on Community Supervision Risk and Needs Assessment

Community supervision is a set of programs used to supervise convicted individuals in their local community to facilitate the placement of these individuals in a secure correctional facility (Taxman). The most common forms of community supervision are parole and probation. Parole is another form of supervision plan that occurs after confinement as a remainder of their punishment under community supervision. Those placed on parole can be categorized as inactive or active based on their underlying compliance or criminal conviction record. Probation is a supervision plan that begins after punishment as an alternate to confinement.  The objective of community supervision is to lower recidivism and reintegrate individuals into society by enabling them break the series of addiction, access jobs, and create pro-social conducts and mindsets (Bourgon, 2). Considerably, for community supervision to be effective, they are guided by the princes of risks and needs assessment. Risks and needs assessment can control the community supervision decision making along other major dimensions to reduce and manage risks and make strategic utilization of the limited community supervision resources.

Risks and Needs Assessment

The risks and needs assessment are actuarial-based tools that categorize offenders into risk levels of either high, low, or medium and examine the most effective interventions that can address the needs of the offenders (Holsinger, 95). These needs include antisocial peer groups and antisocial attitudes linked to recidivism. The risk and assessment instrument fails to indicate if an exact offender will recidivate; rather, it recognizes the delinquent’s likelihood or risks of reoffending. The likelihood is grounded on the degree that the offender has similar characteristics as other lawbreakers that have reoffended. For instance, the risk and assessment outcomes in a high categorization indicate that the lawbreaker has features like others who have reoffended. In contrast, the low-risk classification indicates that the sentenced have individualities like offenders who failed to re-offend.

The parole and probation departments rely on the risk assessment to set the supervision levels. Additionally, risk assessments are utilized by vase managers to examine the needs of an individual and link them to the most suitable services as part of re-entry into the community. The risks and needs assessment take various forms and require a different set of information, most of which are actuarial rather than clinical. This means that the information obtained from the risks and needs assessment systematically quantifies the risks of an individual re-offending. The quantified risks and needs scores help the probation and parole practitioners to re-examine their operational decisions regarding the management, classification, and treatment of incarcerated individuals and their re-entry into the community. Individuals with a higher risk score are assigned for restrictive terms or more intensive services, while those with low risk and needs scores receive minimal intervention and are supervised under less restrictive conditions.

Additionally, the RNA offers information that facilitates decisions regarding risk reduction strategies such as employment training, cognitive-behavioral programs, and job assistance that target the offender’s specific needs linked to recidivism. Ideally, since the risks and needs assessment offers information about the lawbreaker’s relative recidivism needs and probable approaches for reducing the offender’s risk, the RNA information is valuable in determining the offender’s amenability, community supervision, and probation situations in sentencing.

Validity of Risk and Needs Assessment Instruments

Most risk and needs assessment tools are based on the risk-need responsivity model. This model is one of the most effective for treating and assessing offenders. The risk-need responsivity is based on the risks principle, need principle, and responsivity principle (Brzezinska). The risk principle preserves treatment and supervision levels ought to link to the criminal’s risk level. This means that to lower reoffending, low-risk offenders’ need fewer services and supervision while the high-risk delinquents have to receive more rigorous services and supervision. Therefore, the level of service should match the risks of the offender r-offending grounded on static factors such as the arrest records, age of arrest, the current age, and dynamic aspects like attitudes, relationships and drug abuse. The need principle holds that the treatment service should focus on the static and dynamic influences or the criminogenic wants to lower the delinquent’s likelihood of reoffending (Viglione, 666). The dynamic aspects influence the offender’s characteristics that can change. These include social relationships, substance abuse, and attitudes.

The criminogenic needs correlate with the offender’s behavior and the likelihood of the offender re-offending. The dynamic nature of these needs makes it possible to specifically target the problems through treatment programs for behavioral change. Targeting the needs of the offender has proven to lower the recidivism rate. These have become important domains in newer risk assessment tools. Therefore, there is a need to assess the criminogenic needs ad target interventions to the offender’s needs. The responsivity code holds that the behavior approaches for delinquents ought to rely on the cognitive social learning approaches that can be tailored to a person’s characteristics, such as genders and cognitive abilities that can influence successful program outcomes (Viglione, 667). This means that there is a need to maximize the ability of the offender to learn from the rehabilitative intervention through offering cognitive-behavioral treatment and ensuring that the interventions are personalized to the motivation, learning approach, strengths, and capabilities of the offender.

Types of Risk Assessment Instruments

The use of validated risks and assessment tools is a necessary and sufficient condition to facilitate the appropriateness and effectiveness of community supervision (Casey). Some of the commonly used risk and needs assessment tools include Correctional Assessment and Intervention System (CAIS), Correctional Offender Management Profile for Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), Offender Screening Tool (OST), Ohio Risk Assessment System(ORAS), and Static Risk and Offer Needs Guide (STRONG). The risk and needs assessment tools vary in various ways. There is a need to understand how a specific tool is appropriately used and implemented. Some of the major differences are linked to the assessment approach and purpose.

The correction assessment and intervention system is a supervision model that brings together risks and needs assessment interview that helps in understanding an individual, especially what motivates their behavior. Relatively, this helps identify important issues that the offender may encounter during supervision. The focus on behavioral motivations boosts the chances of potential for success. The correction offender and management profiling for alternative sanctions have been used to assess the risks and needs for offenders by examining the likelihood of the offender becoming more recidivist. It helps place the inmates in the right programs that will facilitate re-entry into society, thus reducing the chances of re-offending.

The offender screening tools assess the risks of the re-offending and criminogenic needs through the use of nine domains. Ohio risks assessment system identifies the dynamic factors that lead an individual towards criminal behaviors. This helps the community supervision officers to assess the offender, tailor interventions, and inform behavioral responses. The information obtained from this tool identifies which re-entry programs and services are best in meeting an individual’s needs. Static Risk and Offer Needs Guide (STRONG) was developed to examine the offender’s needs and predict recidivism. It’s an evidence-based risk and assessment planning system which measures both protective and risk factors.

Legal Liability of Community Supervision Officers

The courts make the parole and probation officers more accountable for the control and supervision of officers. In performing duties, the parole and probation officers can be held liable for actions that arise from the offender, such as re-offending after re-entry into society (Viglione, 670). This is because the parolees and probationers are expected to supervise the offenders, protect society and facilitate the rehabilitation of the offenders. In a freshly and expanding epoch of personal injury law, the parole and probation officers also incur legal liability for injuries that result from the offender injuring a third party. An individual might decide to sue the community supervision officer for the damages considering that the cause of damage is the officer’s negligence and failure to control the offender’s behavior. Therefore, it’s important to rely on the risks and needs assessment tools to understand the need and dynamic factors that will facilitate behavioral change and law abiding lifestyle for the offender. The risk and need assessment allow the community supervision officers to examine the probability of an individual committing another criminal offense.

Critiques of Risk and Assessment Tools

The risks and need assessments are the foundation for evidence-based practice utilized for appropriate correction interventions in community supervisions. This is because they can identify the risks and needs that can lower the risk of recidivism. However, certain critiques warrant acknowledgment, especially from the offenders and the court. Some critics argue that the risk and needs assessments are ultimately educated guesses and their limited ability to increasingly predict the risks and needs of the offenders (Brzezinska). Another potential critique is that the risks and assessments tools are increasingly discriminative when not thoroughly evaluated to ensure they are unbiased. Some offenders claim the possibility that minorities will score higher on the risks and needs assessment due to their exposure to social inequality and racial discrimination rather than the likelihood to engage in criminal behavior. Therefore, it’s important to understand that there is some resistance in using risk and needs assessment despite their benefits in community supervision operations.

Works Cited

Bourgon, Guy, et al. “The role of program design, implementation, and evaluation in evidence-based, real-world community supervision.” Fed. Probation 74 (2010): 2.

Brzezinska, Daisy. “An examination of risk assessments in community supervision sentencing, an evidence-based practice of effective correctional intervention.” (2018).

Casey, Pamela M., et al. “Offender risk & needs assessment instruments: A primer for courts.” National Center for State Courts (2014).

Holsinger, Alexander M. “Implementation of actuarial risk/need assessment and its effect on community supervision revocations.” Justice Research and Policy 15.1 (2013): 95-122.

Taxman, Faye S., ed. Handbook on risk and need assessment: Theory and practice. Taylor & Francis, 2016.

Viglione, Jill. “The risk-need-responsivity model: How do probation officers implement the principles of effective intervention?.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 46.5 (2019): 655-673.