By: Tina Gensler, equivant Supervision and Pretrial Professional Services Manager
While initial risk needs assessments offer practitioners a great starting point to gauge general risk to recidivate and offense-specific needs, deeper insights can be gained through the use of alternative screening tools. These secondary assessments allow agencies an opportunity to save time, streamline internal decisions and customize supervision strategies and case management plans relating to trauma, drug and alcohol use, history of violence, behavioral health, domestic violence, and sex offense. Many of the available tools are nationally validated, while other instruments and questionnaires help staff better understand the backgrounds of justice-involved individuals so pathways forward can be paved.
Substance Abuse Screeners:
With the opioid epidemic continuing to spread across the U.S., the TCU Drug Screen 5 and corresponding Opioid Supplement can help you collect important information about the potential risk of opioid drug overdose and make more rapid referrals for services.
Domestic Violence:
The Northpointe Suite offers instruments to assess the risk of repeated domestic violence, future partner intimate partner violence, as well as frequency and severity of assaults.
Sex Offender Actuarial Instruments:
The Static-99R is designed to estimate the probability of sexual and violence recidivism, while the STABLE-2007 and ACUTE-2007 tools assess and track changes in risk status over time by assessing changeable dynamic factors that may indicate a sexual re-offense is imminent. These tools provide correctional agencies information about the risk they are managing with the sex offender population, while informing levels of community treatment and supervision.
Mental and Behavioral Health Tools:
The emotional, psychological and social well-being of the clients we supervise continues to be a relevant topic of discussion. Research demonstrates the positive impacts of deploying strategies and services to support, rather than contain, this population. The following list of tools can be used to meet a variety of mental and behavior health needs: ACEs Quesionnaire, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Cheklists, Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale, Correctional Mental Health Screen, Brief Jail Mental Health Screen, Medical and Mental Health Screening, URICA, and GLM-Self.
Criminal Thinking Scales:
The Texas Christian University Criminal Thinking Scales (TCUTS) incorporates everyday scenarios to assess cognitive patterns as they relate to criminal behavior and a client’s intent to commit crimes. It also aims to find out more about clients’ perception of law enforcement, ownership and accountability, and more to get a sense for the overall psychology of a justice-involved individual.
Stages of Change Questionnaires:
According to the highly researched and well respected transtheoretical model (TTM), people typically fall into one of five stages of change that indicate their willingness to improve themselves. The stages of change assessment can help practitioners easily assign applicable stages to clients to understand where they fall when it comes to recidivism.
The secondary assessments, alternative screening instruments and questionnaires highlighted above, along with many others, are available in the Northpointe Suite application, powered by equivant Supervision. Our software and team of former practitioners can help your agency implement the right tools to ensure staff better understand the offense-specific risk and need areas of these populations by creating effective supervision strategies that support rehabilitation and increased public safety. Learn more about our full catalog of assessments and what they can do for you and your team today by reaching out to our team.
