SAVRY (Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth)
Definition
24-item structured professional judgement instrument for assessing violence risk in young people aged 12-18, with the strongest multi-jurisdictional validation record of any juvenile risk tool.
- Full name
- Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth
- Items
- 24
- Method type
- Structured professional judgement, not actuarial
- Age range
- 12 to 18 years
Common questions
How is structured professional judgement different from an actuarial score?+
SAVRY does not sum items into a fixed cutoff score. The evaluator rates historical, social, and protective factors, then forms a final low, moderate, or high risk judgement, which lets clinical context override a mechanical total.
Why is a youth-specific tool needed instead of an adult risk instrument?+
Adolescent risk factors, such as peer delinquency and school engagement, differ from adult predictors like criminal history, and developmental change means risk status in youth is less stable than in adults, so tools built and validated on adult samples transfer poorly.
Related terms
- Doli Incapax
- Common-law rebuttable presumption that children aged 10-13 are incapable of criminal intent unless the prosecution proves they knew the act was seriously...
- Dual-Systems Model (Steinberg 2008)
- Developmental theory proposing that adolescent risk-taking results from an imbalance between an early-maturing socioemotional brain system and a later-maturing cognitive-control system, producing...
- JJ Act 2015 § 15
- Provision of India's Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015 requiring a preliminary forensic-psychological assessment of 16-17 year olds accused...
- Kent Factors
- Eight criteria articulated in Kent v. United States (1966) for evaluating whether a juvenile should be transferred to adult court, including seriousness...
- MAYSI-2
- Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument-Second Version; a brief mental-health screening tool for young people in juvenile justice settings, widely used in US detention...
- Miller V. Alabama (2012)
- US Supreme Court ruling prohibiting mandatory life-without-parole sentences for offenders who were under 18 at the time of their offence, on the...
- Montgomery V. Louisiana (2016)
- US Supreme Court ruling applying Miller v. Alabama retroactively to prisoners already serving mandatory life-without-parole sentences imposed for crimes committed as juveniles.