From Intuition to Structured Professional Judgment: Predicting Youth Reoffending in Police Casework

Purpose: Predicting youth reoffending is a challenging task, particularly in police practice where assessments of criminal risk are still mostly based on prior offending and intuitive judgment. Structured Professional Judgment (SPJ) approaches have demonstrated advantages over unstructured decision making in forensic settings. However, it remains unclear whether such approaches are useful under conditions of limited information and time. The present study examined the practical applicability of the Method to Evaluate and Identify at-risK youthS (MEIKS), a structured and strength-based risk assessment developed for police casework. Method: Twenty-eight German police officers received training in the use of the MEIKS and subsequently assessed 42 youths aged 14-18 years with a history of offending. Predictive validity was examined using official reoffending data over a 12-month period. Results: Police officers using the MEIKS successfully differentiated between youths who did and did not reoffend. Predictive accuracy was promising, particularly for violent offending. The strength scale demonstrated the highest predictive accuracy for general (AUC = .69, p = .03) and violent offending (AUC = .81, p < .001). In addition, police officers’ overall risk estimates showed incremental value for predicting violent reoffending beyond prior offending. Conclusion: The findings provide preliminary evidence that strength-based SPJ approaches can be usefully applied in police casework and indicate added value beyond relying solely on prior offending.