Researchers from The Institute for Innovation & Implementation release Detention Risk Assessment Instrument (DRAI) Validation Study Report: 2025 Update.
Last month, the Detention Risk Assessment Instrument (DRAI) Validation Study Report: 2025 Update was released. The report was authored by Institute researchers Dr. Michael Schlossman (Research Assistant Professor), Dr. Aaron Betsinger (Research Assistant Professor), and William Altekruse (Senior Research Analyst, MSW-UMB). This research is an example of The Institute’s evaluation support across the juvenile justice and child welfare systems and its longstanding partnership with child-serving agencies in Maryland.
When police request that arrested youth be detained to ensure public safety, juvenile justice officials must weigh evidence about the youth’s offense history and current offense to make an appropriate decision. Officials can choose to keep the young person in detention, let them go home, or send them home but require that they be monitored electronically or report to an evening reporting center after school. To aid decision-making regarding the appropriate use of secure detention, Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services (DJS) uses a Detention Risk Assessment Instrument (DRAI), with scored items based on research evidence, to assess the degree to which youth pose a public safety and/or flight risk. By law, the DRAI must be validated every five years to ensure its risk factors are both accurate and predictive. This study identified six items that, when considered together, substantially improve the DRAI's ability to identify youth with a higher or lower likelihood of being arrested before their court hearings or failing to appear for them. The Department of Juvenile Services began utilizing the updated DRAI (based on this study's findings) in February of this year.
The goal of using a DRAI is to help juvenile justice officials make fair decisions that keep both youth and the community safe in the short term. The Institute for Innovation & Implementation will continue studying detention decision-making processes in Maryland. This work includes examining the effectiveness of the new 2025 DRAI and evaluating how new and innovative alternative-to-detention programs (including those developed by UMB’s Embrace Initiative) are being utilized-and how effective these options are at helping young people and families.