There is a wealth of research that shows juvenile justice systems that utilize structured and validated assessment tools, such as the YLS/CMI, are far more effective at reducing rates of recidivism than those who do not. In line with this research, the Department of Justice (DoJ) in Western Australia adopted the YLS/CMI as the standard risk assessment tool for evaluating the criminogenic risk and needs of youth entering the justice system. While there is evidence supporting the utility of the YLS/CMI in predicting recidivism, there is little research demonstrating its effectiveness in Australian juvenile populations and no such research in a West Australian population. There is also a lack of research on the utility of the tool with young Indigenous offenders, which is particularly concerning given the significant overrepresentation of Indigenous people in the Australian criminal justice system. Our study was the first to examine the reliability and predictive validity of the YLS/CMI on a sample of West Australian juvenile offenders. In this paper, we present the results of two analyses. The first examines the properties of the YLS/CMI in a cohort of 4,653 juvenile offenders in Western Australia, including factor structure, internal consistency, and differences between male and female youth and between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth. Consistent with our hypotheses, the tool demonstrated excellent internal consistency (α = .91) and cross-validation analyses identified significant differences between groups on total YLS scores and risk domains. The second analysis examines the predictive validity of the YLS/CMI in a subsample of 921 youth with a minimum follow-up period of 2 years. The overall recidivism rate was 74.8% and there were differences in scores and recidivism rates for Indigenous compared to non-Indigenous youth, although the predictive accuracies in terms of AUC were similar (c. = 0.65 and 0.66, respectively).

大量研究表明，使用结构化且经过验证的评估工具（例如 YLS/CMI）的青少年司法系统在降低累犯率方面比不使用的系统要有效得多。根据这项研究，西澳大利亚州司法部 (DoJ) 采用 YLS/CMI 作为标准风险评估工具，用于评估进入司法系统的青少年的犯罪风险和需求。虽然有证据支持 YLS/CMI 在预测累犯方面的效用，但几乎没有研究证明其在澳大利亚青少年群体中的有效性，而且在西澳大利亚群体中也没有此类研究。还缺乏关于该工具对年轻土著罪犯的效用的研究，鉴于澳大利亚刑事司法系统中土著人民的比例过高，这一点尤其令人担忧。我们的研究首次检验了 YLS/CMI 对西澳大利亚青少年罪犯样本的可靠性和预测有效性。在本文中，我们提出了两项​​分析的结果。第一个研究考察了西澳大利亚州 4,653 名青少年罪犯的 YLS/CMI 特性，包括因素结构、内部一致性以及男性和女性青少年之间以及土著和非土著青少年之间的差异。与我们的假设一致，该工具表现出出色的内部一致性 (α = .91)，并且交叉验证分析发现各组之间在 YLS 总分和风险领域方面存在显着差异。第二项分析检验了 YLS/CMI 在 921 名青少年子样本中的预测有效性，随访期至少为 2 年。总体累犯率为 74.8%，尽管 AUC 的预测准确性相似，但与非土著青年相比，土著青年的分数和累犯率存在差异（C。 = 0.65 和 0.66，分别）。