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Risk, Old Wives’ Tales, and Juvenile Justice Reform

February 9, 2015 | Joe Vignati, Assistant Deputy Commissioner, Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice

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You may have seen this clever commercial during the Super Bowl. If you haven’t, here’s a brief description: One young boy with the gumption to challenge the very fabric of our society has cannonballed into a pool less than an hour after eating. The message? The world is full of rules. Be the exception. Challenge those in charge (and drive an Audi).

You may have seen this clever commercial during the Super Bowl. If you haven’t, here’s a brief description: One young boy with the gumption to challenge the very fabric of our society has cannonballed into a pool less than an hour after eating. The message? The world is full of rules. Be the exception. Challenge those in charge (and drive an Audi).

This harrowing depiction of the domino theory of aquatic delinquency eloquently shows how old, long-held beliefs often have no basis in reality. (If you are feeling doubtful, please reference this link.)

So what does all this have to do with juvenile justice reform?

In much the same way as that trailblazing boy, state leaders and juvenile justice practitioners from around the country are working with researchers to challenge the long-held belief that all youth are one mistake away from ruin—and that to prevent our youth from cannonballing into a life of crime and prison, we must treat all youth equally harshly.

Fortunately, Georgia’s state leadership decided to challenge this “get tough, one size fits all” approach to juvenile justice. Thanks to the courage of our General Assembly and Governor Deal, HB 242 passed both chambers unanimously, and was signed into law on May 2, 2013.

The new “Children’s Code,” which became effective January 1, 2014, requires that validated assessment instruments be used to accurately assess which youth are at risk for recidivism.

In order to meet this new legislative requirement, the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) contracted with NCCD to get help analyzing how DJJ was assessing the needs of committed youth and determine how we could improve our assessment processes.

The analysis showed that our assessment instrument, the Comprehensive Risk and Needs Assessment (CRN), was classifying the majority of our youth as low risk and, based on outcome rates, and was not accurately classifying youth based on risk of recidivism. In fact, 25% of all Georgia youth placed in out-of-home placements and 40% of all detained youth were low-level offenders, including misdemeanants and status offenders.

To correct this shortcoming, NCCD helped DJJ engage a group of Georgia stakeholders to finalize a new risk assessment for our state. This group of stakeholders included juvenile court judges, county and state juvenile probation officers, prosecuting attorneys, public defenders, and DJJ staff, with support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. While this was a highly detailed and involved process that required a number of meetings in order to develop group consensus, thanks to the perseverance of the entire group, a new risk assessment, the pre-dispositional risk assessment was developed.

The group was also able to develop a structured dispositional matrix to use the new risk assessment results (and offense information) to establish consistency in making disposition recommendations to juvenile courts. A revised juvenile detention assessment instrument was also developed utilizing the stakeholder group.

Both the risk assessment and the dispositional matrix were tested with Georgia data and also field tested with local probation staff. The risk assessment was also tested for inter-rater reliability.

These new tools more accurately classify youth and produce a more even distribution among risk levels. So now we know, based on risk, which youth we should focus our resources on, based on their likelihood of recidivism. This is an example of using the best available data to drive decision-making processes.

By implementing new, validated risk assessments, and employing them in the ways intended, we will be able to ensure the right youth get the right intervention—ones targeted to meet their criminogenic risks all while reducing recidivism. In addition to protecting public safety, the use of validated tools leads to more equitable and informed decision making across the state.

As juvenile reform work continues in Georgia, ongoing implementation and fidelity monitoring will be crucial to achieving the results that the citizens of our state expect. And by using data, with a focus on results, we can slowly change the narrative of juvenile justice to one that embraces the capacity for growth and positive change.

Joe Vignati is the Assistant Deputy Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ). Mr. Vignati has been intimately involved in all aspects of Georgia’s juvenile justice system for the past 28 years, tirelessly serving at-risk youth in a wide variety of roles, both in his career with state government and as a volunteer in community settings. He holds a bachelor’s degree in politics from Georgia Regents University in Augusta, GA, and graduated summa cum laude in 1992 with a master’s degree in public administration from Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA.

Mr. Vignati currently serves as Co-Chair of the Juvenile Incentive Grant Funding Committee that helped award $11.6 million in grant funds specifically aimed to reduce unnecessary out-of-home placements of youth appearing before juvenile courts across Georgia. He is a past recipient of the National Coalition for Juvenile Justice’s Tony Gobar Award and was honored this past August by the Georgia Juvenile Services Association with the Harold K. Ables Award, recognizing his significant contributions to the field.