Juvenile Risk and Needs Assessment: Theory, Research, Policy, and Practice

This book takes a comprehensive, analytic approach to understanding Juvenile Risk and Needs Assessment (JRNA), covering elements relevant to how the practice affects youths’ cases and the juvenile justice system. The work draws on both analysis of the extensive research on risk and needs assessment in the juvenile justice system as well as data from the authors’ recent work in the area.

Authors Sullivan and Childs have extensive experience in teaching about and doing research on the juvenile justice system, including multiple studies on juvenile risk and needs assessment tools and their implementation. This expansive, integrative book leaves readers with a realistic sense of "where things stand" on the theory, research, policy, and practice of JRNA. By bringing together existing ideas and assessing them in depth, it identifies possible future paths and sparks ideas for improving the juvenile justice response to delinquent and at-risk youths.

Juvenile Risk and Needs Assessment is essential reading for scholars of juvenile justice system impact and reform as well as practitioners engaged in youth and juvenile justice work ranging from the preventive to the rehabilitative stages.

Christopher J. Sullivan is Professor and Director of the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Texas State University. He received his doctorate from Rutgers University in 2005. His research interests include developmental and life-course criminology; juvenile delinquency and juvenile justice; and research and analytic methods. He has published more than 90 journal articles and book chapters on those and related topics. He is author of Taking Juvenile Justice Seriously: Developmental Insights and System Challenges (Temple University Press, 2019), which was selected as an Outstanding Contribution by the American Society of Criminology’s Division of Developmental and Life Course Criminology in 2020. Dr. Sullivan has been named a 250th Anniversary Fellow at Rutgers University and a Fellow of the Graduate School at the University of Cincinnati for his research and has received award recognition for his mentoring and teaching of graduate students and academic service. He has been data analyst or Principal Investigator (PI) on several federally or state-funded projects in juvenile justice practice and policy. Professor Sullivan has been Co-Editor of the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency since 2017.

Kristina K. Childs is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Central Florida. She received her doctoral degree in Criminology from the University of South Florida in 2008. Then, she was a post-doctoral fellow for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Models for Change: Systems Reform in Juvenile Justice initiative in Louisiana. Her main research interests include juvenile risk and need assessment practices, evaluation of prevention and intervention programs for at-risk youths, and the effectiveness of mental health and de-escalation training and education for front-line juvenile justice decision-makers. She has published more than 25 academic articles and book chapters on juvenile justice issues. To support her research, she has received over $1 million in external grants from the National Institute of Justice, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance.