30 November 2017

Ministry of Justice research highlights need to take account of maturity of young adults involved in crime

News and events

A significant new research study by the Ministry of Justice firmly supports T2A’s long-standing campaign objective that criminal justice agencies need to take account of young adults’ maturity in service design and delivery. This was also a key recommendation of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee in its inquiry on Young Adult Offenders in 2016.

It summaries the government’s research in developing and validating a new screening tool for psychosocial maturity for adult men serving prison sentences.

“This study suggests that it is possible to screen for maturity in a meaningful way, using a tool derived from OASys items.

The fact that there appears to be a strong relationship between maturity, risk and proven reoffending outcomes underlines the need to take into account maturity in the management of men who have committed crime.

This tool could usefully be used to better understand and respond to the needs of this group, and to support decisions about the commissioning of interventions, and sentence planning for young adults.

Combining assessment of risk of reoffending with the assessment of maturity, could help to target interventions to those most in need, and most likely to benefit from, intervention.

Implementation plans need to consider the benefits of the information this tool could provide in responding to the needs of younger adults in prison, against the resource and training implications of use.”

 

Key findings

• A ten-item maturity screening tool was created from factor analysis of items from the Offender Assessment System (OASys). The tool was found to be valid and reliable.
• Scores on the OASys maturity screening tool were correlated significantly with age and with risk of reoffending.
• The OASys maturity screening tool improved the ability of a static risk assessment tool and age in predicting oneyear proven reoffending rates.
• Those who were less mature according to the OASys maturity screening tool were younger in age, and were a higher risk of proven reoffending than those who were more mature. Less mature individuals had higher rates of proven reoffending than were predicted by their OGRS3 scores. The reoffending rates of the more mature individuals were in line with those predicted by their OGRS3 scores.
• The OASys maturity screening tool has potential to inform the commissioning of appropriate services and interventions by identifying those who have lower psychosocial maturity.
• The relationship observed between maturity and proven reoffending suggests there would be value in incorporating assessment of maturity into the management of young adult men convicted of crime, so that issues relating to maturity can be appropriately addressed.