Legal Measures to Adolescents: Auxiliary Assessment to Decision Taken

Abstract

The assessment of offender adolescents, to define the most appropriate legal measure and the elaboration of the intervention plan, is a fundamental task in the Juvenile Justice System. This article reports on a study with a Canadian instrument, the Youth Level of Service / Case Management Inventory (YLS /CMI), based on risk factors associated with the persistence of offending conduct, in order to assess its predictive capacity and compare it to two other instruments, the Jesness Personality Inventory and the Socialization Factor Scale. The sample consisted of 40 offender adolescents and their parents/responsible caregivers, and the data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Results indicated good convergence among the instruments. The YLS / CMI was able to identify adolescents with different levels of risk and satisfactorily predict their conduct between 6 and 12 months after the initial evaluation.