Risk assessment practices in Youth Justice in England and Wales have been predominantly conducted through the use of Asset (now Asset Plus), a tool that has shown good predictive capacity and case management properties (Baker, 2014; Wilson & Hinks, 2011). However, recent commentary on the use of such metrics with young people has questioned the longer-term benefits when issues such as the labelling/criminalisation of young people and more diversionary policies are brought to account (Bateman, 2011). Evidence suggests that the majority of young people will not continue to engage in challenging/ anti-social behaviour in the medium-term and only a small minority will actually offend in the longer-term, regardless of any interventions they may receive (Haines and Case, 2015). Hence, being able to ?screen out? this larger low-risk cohort could free up resources, whilst also having a longer-term positive impact upon the individual through a reduction in stigmatisation/ labelling effects. This paper outlines the development of the Ceredigion Youth Screening Tool (CYSTem), developed and tested to address the two facets of criminality and vulnerability and closely aligned to the eight key risk indicators identified in the R-N-R literature (Andrews and Bonta, 2010). Initial results with a cohort of 342 young people indicates good convergent and discriminative validity in screening out the lowest level referrals, whilst also identifying 90% of potential future offenders. More importantly, CYSTem is able to screen out approximately 35% of low risk offenders whom are unlikely to require formal evaluation and/or intervention. Suggestions for future scale refinement and the wider implications of screening out low risk referrals are also discussed.publishersversionPeer reviewe
