Recrafting Youth Risk Assessment: Developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool for Iowa

ABSTRACT

Risk assessments have become prevalent in the juvenile justice field. Many of these tools are adopted off-the-shelf and not adapted to fit the characteristics of a jurisdiction’s justice-involved youth. We examined the Positive Achievement Change Tool (PACT) in Iowa. Although used widely, the PACT is relatively unmodified. We updated the tool via item selection and weighting, gender-specific models and multiple outcomes, developing the Modified Positive Achievement Change Tool (M-PACT) for Iowa. We identified an average predictive accuracy increase of 7%. Evidence of reduced racial disparity was also observed, and research implications outline the need to customize assessments to improve predictive accuracy.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Jeff Regula and Laura Roeder-Grubb from the Iowa Division of Criminal and Justice Planning (DCJP) for their insight and assistance regarding the Iowa Delinquency Assessment (IDA). We would also like to thank the DCJP for allowing us the opportunity to examine and update the IDA. We would further like to thank Bill Feyerherm (Portland State University, Criminology and Criminal Justice, Emeritus) and Andrew Peterson (Washington State Administration of the Courts) for their guidance in identifying changes in racial disparity across the current and updated models.

Notes

¹ Readers should note that not all youth who receive the Prescreen will also receive the Full Assessment, as some youth are diverted out of the system.

² It should be noted that internally, the DCJP refers to its version of the tool as the Iowa Delinquency Assessment (IDA). The tool is identical to the PACT, which is more widely used, and readers are more familiar with. Therefore, for the purposes of this publication we refer to the IDA as the Iowa version of the PACT.

³ To date, we have not yet adjusted the Prescreen for Iowa.

⁴ The Iowa DCJP calls the Prescreen the ‘Short-Form’ and the Full Assessment the ‘Long-Form’.

⁵ In Washington State, recidivism is defined as a new charge, that results in an adjudication, within 18 months of a youth’s initial assessment.

⁶ AUC industry standards identify four ranges/effect sizes of AUC values – negligible (<.56), small (0.56–0.63), moderate (0.64-0.70), and large (>0.71) (see Rice and Harris 2005).

⁷ Readers should note that items with zero weight were removed from the final model.

⁸ Cohen’s d effect magnitudes include small (0.2), medium (0.5), and large (0.8). Comparatively, corresponding odds ratios are small (1.68), medium (3.47), and large (6.71). See Chen, Cohen, and Chen (2010) for a review.

⁹ These AUC values are lower than what has been found in Washington State and may be the result of differing recidivism definitions (e.g., new charge within 12 months).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zachary Hamilton

Zachary Hamilton, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology and the Director of the Institute of Criminal Justice at Washington State University. He was previously employed as a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Court Innovation and at the National Development and Research Institutes. His current work focuses on risk and need assessment and identifying responsive populations for treatment matching. He has developed the STRONG-R assessment for correctional populations, the SAFER for pretrial defendants, and the M-PACT for juveniles, which have been implemented in both state and local jurisdictions nationally. Recent publications have appeared in the Criminology and Public Policy, Experimental Criminology, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, Criminal Justice & Behavior, and Offender Rehabilitation.

Melissa A. Kowalski

Melissa A. Kowalski, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of the Department of Criminal Justice at the College of Brockport, SUNY. Her research areas include juvenile justice, risk/needs assessment, mental health, trauma, and corrections. Current projects include a multi-state analysis of a youth risk/needs assessment, as well as an investigation regarding the effects of Adverse Childhood Events and mental health issues as potential responsivity factors in programming for justice-involved youth.

Roger Schaefer

Roger Schaefer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Law and Justice at Central Washington University. Dr. Schaefer’s research interests include community supervision of sex offenders, correctional dynamics and discourse, and correctional program evaluation. He teaches courses on correctional counseling, community-based corrections, and criminological theory. His scholarship focuses on both correctional policy and practice while embracing a mix-methods approach and recent work appears in the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology and the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology.

Alex Kigerl

Alex Kigerl, Ph.D., is an Assistant Research Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University. He received his Master of Science in Criminology and Criminal Justice at Portland State University and his Doctorate from Washington State University. His previous work was as a Data Analyst for the Washington State Institute for Criminal Justice. His current work is focused on developing new risk assessment instruments for predicting criminal recidivism and re-hospitalization for the Department of Corrections and the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. His research interests include corrections, personality theory, and cybercrime with a focus on illicit email spam.