Not all fourth generation risk-needs assessment tools are the same. The Static Risk Offender Needs Guide – Revised (STRONG-R) assessment system has characteristics that other assessments don’t possess, including multivariate item selection, analytic weighting, gender-specific models, general and specific recidivism models, and an available sex offender module.

Key features:

  • – The STRONG-R includes 130 unique static and dynamic items.
  • – Measures are selected and weighted depending on the stage of the criminal justice system, outcome of interest, gender of the offender, and jurisdiction, all making the tool customizable for each specific agency.
  • – Unlike other adult assessments, the STRONG-R scoring models do more than simply classify offenders into the categories of Low, Moderate, and High risk (although they do include those risk categories). Four distinct scoring models (Violent, Property, Drug, and General Felony) have cut points designating an offender as low, moderate or high risk in each area, empowering staff to further differentiate needs by level (see below). This includes a Criminally Diverse level for offenders who are high risk in multiple categories. This is a feature that does not exist in other adult assessments.
  • – The STRONG-R measures both criminogenic needs and risk in 9 domains:
    • — Alcohol/Drug Use
    • — Employment
    • — Friends
    • — Attitudes/Behaviors
    • — Residential
    • — Family
    • — Aggression
    • — Mental Health
    • –Education
  • -Criminal history is also included in the data analyzed through the STRONG-R and it can be considered an 10th risk domain.

 

Tools for All Stages of the System

Different points in the criminal justice system require assessments for different purposes.

The STRONG-R Pre-trial assessment includes static and dynamic items and measures both risk and protective factors. This tool is perfect to determine risk for Failure to Appear (FTA).

The STRONG-R Low-Risk Screener includes static risk and protective items and is used to efficiently identify individuals for placement alternatives or administration supervision. This assessment is most appropriate for subject’s re-entering the system or those on community supervision.

The full STRONG-R includes static and dynamic items and measures both risk and protective factors to inform needs for all criminal justice populations, provide classification information for prison and jail populations, and predict compliance for individuals on community supervision (i.e., probation and parole). Through Vant4gePoint, results are used to develop case plan goals and assign appropriate programming.

Gender Responsive
Unlike other risk-needs assessments, the STRONG-R is truly gender specific and responsive. While other assessments simply apply different risk cut points for males and females, the STRONG-R has separate predictive models for males and females.

Predictive Validity
Reliability and validity of the STRONG-R have been established using significant samples sizes of offenders through the pilot (N= 200), initial development (N= 44,010) and updated development (N= 97,650) of the instrument.

All eight models (Violent, Property, Drug, Felony – for both men and women) demonstrate strong predictive discrimination (Area Under the Curve – AUC) and accuracy (ACC), as well as satisfactory to strong levels of calibration (entropy and slope) and the combined SAR metric. Comparing the predictive validity to that of other contemporary tools, the STRONG-R has outperformed across a variety of metrics of discrimination, accuracy, calibration, and combined measures (Drake, 2014; Hamilton et al, 2016), relying not only on AUCs.

Contact us for more information about STRONG-R validity.

Download the Strong-r Datasheet

You may also review publications about the STRONG-R, including:

  • Designed to Fit: The Development and Validation of the STRONG-R Recidivism Risk Assessment (Hamilton et al., 2016).
  • A More Consistent Application of the RNR Model: The STRONG-R Needs Assessment (Hamilton. et al, 2016), published in Criminal Justice and Behavior.

The STRONG-R can be validated using your offender population to maximize its predictive validity even further.