Assessing, Treating and Managing Juveniles with Illegal Sexual Behavior

The Office of Sex Offender Sentencing, Monitoring, Apprehending, Registering and Tracking (SMART) seeks applications for the development and validation of an assessment scale that measures treatment needs for juveniles who have sexually offended and progress toward completion of treatment. This program furthers the work of the SMART Office’s Sex Offender Management Assessment and Planning Initiative (SOMAPI), a project designed to assess the state of research and practice in sex offender management and to inform the Office of Justice Programs’ research and grant-making efforts in this area. This program is authorized by 42 U.S.C. § 16901, et seq.; Pub. L. No. 114-113, 129 Stat 2242, 2307.

The goals and objectives of this project involve a systematic approach to (1) develop, validate and implement a holistic treatment needs and progress scale (TNPS) (i.e., one that considers idiographic factors and socio-ecological influences) to assist treatment providers in identifying risk relevant treatment needs; (2) develop individualized, responsive treatment plans; and (3) monitor progress in response to effective interventions. The dynamic items included in the ERASOR and J-SOAP II, along with those in dynamic scales already developed to accompany these two risk assessment scales (Worling’s DASH-13 and Righthand’s TNPR) will be a focus of this project, along with Griffin & Beech’s AIM-2 and several other promising sources. Three demographically and culturally diverse State juvenile justice agencies that provide cognitive-behavioral treatment have electronic data systems that track youths while incarcerated as well as during follow-up and have expressed great interest in the project and were selected as pilot sites.

NCF/CA