Here we briefly discuss some other screens and assessments used in the jails and the community throughout the country.
1. The Texas Uniform Health Status Update is a medical screen that is easy to use and comes with user-friendly instructions. Some benefits of this screen are its one-page length and instructions to guide the screener on its use.
2. The New York City Correctional Health Services screen is a four-page screening instrument that uses prompting questions during the medical history section. The screen includes a section on the last page that reminds the staff to give each inmate three brochures on HIV, sexually transmitted disease, health, and dental needs.
Dr. Brie Williams, a geriatrician and correctional health care expert, recommends that inmates who miss two or more of the following activities of daily living (ADL) answers be transferred directly to a nursing home or assisted living facility if family cannot care for them. Inmates who miss one ADL and/or have fallen in the past year should be assessed more carefully for possible assisted living or nursing home–level care.
Activities of Daily Living: Is the inmate able to do each of the following?
1. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards’ Mental Disability/Suicide Intake Screen is one page and determines if a further mental health evaluation is needed. Any positive response to the six suicide-related questions requires further evaluation of the person.
2. The Suicide Prevention Screening Guidelines, a 16-item screen developed by the New York Commission of Correction, has detailed instructions on how to administer it and is well-regarded by experts.
1. The Clinical Institute Withdrawal Assessment for Alcohol (CIWA-AR) is a recommended alcohol withdrawal screen that can also be used for the psychoactive drug benzodiazepine. This screen requires five minutes to administer and may be reproduced freely.
2. Clinical Opiate Withdrawal Scale (COWS) is an opiate-withdrawal screen.
1. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – Simple Screening Instrument for Substance Abuse (pages 7 - 15).
1. CJ Comprehensive Intake (TCU CJ CI) is usually administered by a counselor in a face-to-face interview held one to three weeks after admission, when the offender has had time to detox and reach greater stabilization and cognitive focus (90 minutes).
2. CJ Client Evaluation of Self and Treatment, Intake Version (TCU CJ CEST-Intake) is a self-rating form completed by the offender at the time of admission to treatment. It includes short scales for psychological adjustment, social functioning, and motivation. These scales also provide a baseline for monitoring offender performance and psychosocial changes during treatment (15 minutes).
3. CJ Client Evaluation of Self and Treatment (TCU CJ CEST) records offender ratings of the counselor, therapeutic groups, and the program in general. It also contains scales assessing psychological adjustment, social functioning, and motivation (35 minutes).
4. TCU Criminal Thinking Scales (TCU CTS) is a supplement to the Criminal Justice - Client Evaluation of Self at Intake(CJ-CESI) and CJ-CEST and is designed to measure “criminal thinking.” The six criminal thinking scales are Entitlement, Justification, Power Orientation, Cold Heartedness, Criminal Rationalization, and Personal Irresponsibility, which represent concepts with special significance in treatment settings for correctional populations (five to ten minutes).
1. New York City Department of Health Homelessness Checklist is a nine-item screen to determine the rate of homelessness of the jail population. The homeless are often frequent users of the jail and shelter system. Identifying this population can help your jail at incarceration transition to direct these individuals to supportive services and shelter or supportive housing at release instead of sending them back to the street, knowing that they will shortly return to jail.
An important issue to address among your jail population is its vocational and employment needs. Many maintain that there is a very strong connection between employment and crime: when individuals are working, they are less likely to be committing crimes. Thus, it is important that we do what we can to foster the employability of inmates when they leave our jails.
Many government and nonprofit agencies have developed tools to assess the employment readiness of people with criminal records. We include two employment assessment tools.
1. PS Plus Employment Assessment Form was developed in the United Kingdom for a prison and community-based project. It surveys for vocational interests, skills, and history; education levels and qualifications; and other barriers to employment, such as driver’s license suspension.
2. Maryland Correctional Education Program Employment Survey was originally developed by the New Mexico Corrections Department and modified and adapted by the Maryland Correctional Education Program. This assessment tool poses a series of 49 questions intended to identify potential challenges the job seeker may face. This tool groups issues by the following six categories: education/training, personal/health, offender, attitude, support, and job search.
1. Mellow, Jeff, Debbie Mukamal, Stefan LoBuglio, Amy Solomon, and Jenny Osborne. 2008. The Jail Administrator’s Toolkit for Reentry, Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Assistance.
2. Orange County, CA. Pretrial risk assessment instrument and report analyzing risk scores by offender characteristics.
1. Vetter, Stephanie J. and John Clark. 2013. The Delivery of Pretrial Justice in Rural Areas.
1. Bogue, Brad, William Woodward and Lore Joplin. 2005. Using a Proxy Score to Pre-screen Offenders for Risk to Reoffend.
2. Davidson County, TN Sheriff’s Office. 2010. A comparison of inmates completing Proxy questions and inmates released without Proxy scores.
3. Davidson County, TN Sheriff’s Office. 2010. Proxy Data Report. Proxy report with data obtained during the initial classification assessment.
4. Denver Sheriff Department. Risk/Need Screening and Assessment Pilot Overview. Proxy pilot and Level of Service Inventory report including tables and graphs.
6. Douglas County, KS Sheriff’s Office. 2009. Douglas County Proxy Fact Sheet. Proxy fact sheet including a discussion on Proxy score ranges are determined.
7. Orange County, CA Sheriff’s Department. 2009. Proxy Pilot 2009 Results. Proxy pilot report including tables and graphs.
8. Orange County, CA. Pilot proxy data spreadsheet.
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