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Alyssa Lee

Dr. Billie Dzeitch, Prof. Sue Bourke

Kids Who Kill

10 February 2020

Response 4 Ohio Youth Assessment System

The Ohio Youth Assessment System (OYAS) is a collection of tools designed to assist

employees of the juvenile justice system assess the risks posed by each youth they encounter.

OYAS was developed when the Department of Youth Services (DYS) realized that they needed a

state-wide risk assessment system in order to eliminate inconsistent services and policies. They

reached out to the criminal justice research department here at UC and asked them to help

develop some sort of tool to assist their employees in determining risk. As explained in the

Latessa article, “The OYAS contains five tools: a diversion tool, a detention tool, a disposition

tool, a residential tool, and a reentry tool. Each tool is used at the appropriate stage to assess

the criminogenic needs of the youth at that stage and to help guide decisions for appropriate

interventions,” (p. 1).

The OYAS is essentially just a scoring sheet. You read through and assign a number to all

the traits the youth has, from juvenile justice system history to values, beliefs and attitudes. At

the end, you tally up the scores from each section. The higher the number, the more risky the

youth is. There is also a detailed explanation section that guides the user in what to look for and

what to ask during the in person interview.

I think the Ohio Youth Assessment System is definitely a good predictor of youth

violence. For starters, it evaluates as many different aspects of a youth’s life as possible. It
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begins with any previous juvenile history, moves on to family/living arrangements, peers/social

support network, education, employment, pro-social skills, substance abuse, mental health,

personality, and concludes with values, beliefs and attitudes. Because OYAS was developed by

criminal justice researchers who were already intimately familiar with the flaws in the system, it

strategically avoids the “one size fits all” issues with programs in the adult system. The other

clever thing about the OYAS is that it isn’t simply used at one stage in the juvenile system.

There are subsections that allow it to be used at any point, from diversion all the way to

residential re-entry. Also, it was designed from the get-go to be a prediction tool. It is used to

predict whether a youth will reoffend or not.

The Hemenway study was conducted in 2017 and aimed to determine “the

incidence/circumstances of child homicide perpetration,” (p. 1). The study looked at data from

2005-2012 with child suspects aged 0-14. Overall, they found that 90% of the perpetrators were

boys, who were often using guns. I don’t think this study can really “predict” youth violence,

but the results do indicate that typically boys are more violent than girls. I feel like this is kind of

a weird question because I didn’t think that the study was trying to be used as a predictor for

future incidents. All the researchers were aiming to do was gather and evaluate data on

children who committed homicides over a seven-year period. I think this particular study would

only be helpful if used to provide data on past incidents.