Measurement invariance of the Youth Self-Report across youth who have committed sexual and nonsexual offenses.

Justice-involved youth experience high rates of mental health problems that require proper screening and assessment in order to effectively intervene. The Youth Self-Report (YSR) is a general psychopathology rating scale that measures several dimensions of psychopathology and is commonly used in clinical assessments, including with justice-involved youth. Yet, the underlying factor structure of the YSR has not been examined specifically in a sample of justice-involved youth.

Assessment of Strengths in Criminal Justice System-Impacted Youth: A Retrospective Validation Study of the SAPROF-YV.

The Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for Violence Risk-Youth Version (SAPROF-YV; de Vries Robbé et al., 2015) was designed specifically to assess strengths as a complement to risk assessment tools. We retrospectively examined its reliability and validity in 305 Canadian community-sentenced youth, both in the overall sample and in male and female, and Black and White, subgroups.

Psychosocial Intervention for Youth With High Externalizing Behaviors and Aggression Is Associated With Improvement in Impulsivity and Brain Gray Matter Volume Changes.

Stop, Now And Plan (SNAP) is a cognitive behavioral-based psychosocial intervention that has a strong evidence base for treating youth with high aggression and externalizing behaviors, many of whom have disruptive behavior disorders. In a pre-post design, we tested whether SNAP could improve externalizing behaviors, assessed by the parent-rated Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and also improve behavioral measures of impulsivity in children with high aggression and impulsivity. We then investigated whether any improvement in externalizing behavior or impulsivity was associated with gray matter volume (GMV) changes assessed using structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI).

The Relationship Between Trauma, Recidivism Risk, and Reoffending in Male and Female Juvenile Offenders.

Elevated rates of traumatic experience in the juvenile justice population are well established. Nevertheless, the role of trauma and its application to rehabilitation and recidivism in a criminal justice context remains hotly debated, particularly for female youth. The Risk-Need-Responsivity framework, the predominant model for risk assessment and case management in juvenile justice, does not consider trauma to be a risk factor for offending.

The service-seeking profiles of youth reporting a legal mandate or perceived coercion for substance use treatment.

Introduction: There is paucity of research on treatment-related coercion in youth: most research focuses on adult populations and legally mandated treatment. This study aims to examine the service-seeking profiles of youth with substance misuse issues who report a legal mandate or perceived coercion to enter treatment.

Methods: Differences between youth who were legally mandated and not legally mandated, and differences between youth reporting high and low perceived coercion, were examined for demographic characteristics, mental health and substance use profiles, motivation, and readiness to change.

Taxometric analyses of pedophilia utilizing self-report, behavioral, and sexual arousal indicators.

Pedophilia refers to the recurrent, intense sexual interest in prepubescent children who, by definition, have not developed any secondary sex characteristics. Researchers have begun to investigate whether persons with pedophilia are qualitatively different from those without pedophilia (pedophilia is a taxon) or if people vary in their level of sexual interest toward children (pedophilia is dimensional). Two relatively small studies have previously attempted to address this question, but produced conflicting results.

The role of mental health and specific responsivity in juvenile justice rehabilitation.

Understanding the role that mental health issues play in justice-involved youth poses challenges for research, policy, and practice. While mental health problems are generally not risk factors for criminal behavior according to the risk-needs-responsivity (RNR) framework of correctional psychology practice, prevalence rates are very high and RNR principles suggest that mental health as a responsivity variable may moderate the success of interventions targeted to criminogenic needs. In this study we investigated the relationships among mental health status, criminogenic needs treatment, and recidivism in a sample of 232 youth referred for court-ordered assessments and followed through their community supervision sentence (probation).

A theoretical evaluation of a youth mental health court program model.

Mental health courts are a promising new approach to addressing the overrepresentation of mental health needs among offender populations, yet little is known about how they facilitate change, particularly for youth. The current study reports on a process evaluation of a youth mental health court in Toronto, Canada. Drawing upon observations of the court and interviews with key informants, we developed a program model of the court and explored its implementation within the context of empirical evidence for treating justice-involved youth.

Program manager perspectives on the service system to meet the needs of youth with concurrent disorders: findings from a Canadian national survey.

Background: Concurrent mental health and substance use issues are a serious problem for adolescents and transition-aged youth. Service providers across sectors must be involved in informing system change to meet youth needs. This study examines stakeholder perspectives on services for youth with concurrent disorders including 1) clinical issues in youth services; 2) priority system issues; and 3) optimal knowledge translation strategies to enhance researcher-stakeholder communication.

The Strengths Assessment Inventory-Youth Version: An evaluation of the psychometric properties with male and female justice-involved youth.

Strengths constitute an important element of developmental assessments. It is consistent with evidence-based practice to use assessment tools that adequately measure a given construct and are appropriate for use with their targeted population. The Strengths Assessment Inventory-Youth Version (SAI-Y; Rawana & Brownlee, 2010)-a self-report measure of personal strengths, self-concept, and emotional functioning-was administered to 230 male and female adolescent offenders.

Moderators of informant agreement in the assessment of adolescent psychopathology: extension to a forensic sample.

A well-documented finding in developmental psychopathology research is that different informants often provide discrepant ratings of a youth's internalizing and externalizing problems. The current study examines youth- and parent-based moderators (i.e.

Exploring differences in youth and parent reports of antisociality among adolescent sexual and nonsexual offenders.

This study examined the extent of, and explored several possible explanations for, the discrepancies found between adolescent and parent reports of conduct problems in adolescent sexual and nonsexual offenders. We found that adolescent sexual offenders scored lower on measures of conduct problems than did nonsexual offenders, whether on the basis of adolescent or parent report, though the difference was much larger for parent reports. Examining this discrepancy more closely, we found that parents of sexual offenders reported less antisocial behavior than did their sons, whereas parents of nonsexual offenders reported more antisocial behavior than did their sons.

Identifying persistently antisocial offenders using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and DSM antisocial personality disorder criteria.

Early starting, lifetime criminal persistence has been called sociopathy, antisocial personality disorder, and psychopathy. There is, however, disagreement about its core features and which measure is best for identifying such individuals. In the 1st of 2 studies of male offenders (n = 74), we found a large association between scores on the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R; R.