By: Genie Jackson, PhD, Research Team Lead at equivant Supervision
Assessments are only useful if they are validated—meaning that they have been shown to predict what they were intended to predict. In the supervision space, we use assessments to determine the risk of recidivism and the individual’s identified criminogenic needs. This paradigm originated from leading criminal justice scholars, Don Andrews and James Bonta, and their Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model. In essence, this model states that the risk of reoffending and the needs of the individual should determine the rehabilitative path and strategies to be used during and after any kind of supervision. Because so much is riding on a validated assessment, it is paramount to the entire justice process. Below are the main reasons to validate your assessments for a healthier agency:
- The First Domino: If the assessment you are using to determine recidivism risk levels, supervision strategies, and treatment/therapy resources falls down under scrutiny, the entire case planning and management pathway collapses; rehabilitation may fail, and recidivism is more likely. In general, individuals categorized as higher risk need more intensive supervision and treatment exposure.
- Proper Resource Allocation: The breadth and depth of treatment is determined by both the individual’s risk and need levels to determine the right course of action. If these categorizations are off, resources are not being used in the right way to help rehabilitate justice-involved individuals.
- Internal Validations Aren’t Enough: Developing and validating assessments internally is not enough. Just because your assessment has been validated on an internal sample does not mean the instrument is validated externally. It is important to have your instruments validated externally to increase its generalizability to your agency’s wider population.
- Changing Laws and Populations: Laws evolve and the characteristics of the population of justice-involved individuals you are supervising change. For example, in many states, when marijuana usage was decriminalized, it necessitated a re-validating of assessments to properly categorize individuals.
Validating assessments is part of the healthy evolution of an agency—and the foundation for providing proper support and treatment opportunities for a changing justice-involved population. equivant Supervision recommends you get your assessments validated every five years. To find out if it’s time to validate your assessments, reach out to us.
