Benefits and Other Uses

Benefits of SORAF

SORAF provides three sex offense specific assessment tools, namely Static-99, Stable-2007, and Acute-2007. These tools allow the identification of static as well as dynamic variables to measure the risk factors for sex offense recidivism. In addition, these tools can act as trailers for assessments like LSI-R© which provide information on general criminogenic risk factors.

SORAF enables inter-agency collaboration in order to achieve the following goals:

  • Manage sex offenders based on their risk and needs.
  • Provide manageable caseloads and supervision standards.
  • Implement evidence-based treatment programs.

Since the identification of risk factors and needs are evidence-based, it allows the agencies to apply their resources where they are needed and helps the correction officers better manage their caseloads. Whether it is treatment or supervision, it allows the case workers to focus on the individual's needs.

In addition, SORAF provides the following benefits:

  • Turn-key solution which can accommodate additional assessment tools, as needed, and can be customized to implement the specific business rules of any agency.
  • Rapid deployment of a comprehensive system to perform risk and need assessments for sexual offense recidivism.
  • Easy modification of the assessment tools and the Combined Report. As the authors come out with new versions of the existing tools or introduce better tools, the system can easily be modified to implement these changes.
  • Scalable architecture which can handle the needs of small and large agencies.
  • Cost-effective pricing options to allow participation from agencies with limited budgets. This is especially applicable for agencies looking to implement a pilot program to determine their future direction.

Other Uses of SORAF

In addition to providing the Combined Report that allows the identification of the top risk targets for case planning of a single individual, SORAF can also be used for the following purposes:

  1. Since SORAF acts as a central repository of assessment data, it can be used as a basis to generate statistical reports. This allows the departments to identify risk patterns for different geographic and demographic sections of their offender population.
  2. SORAF can prove invaluable in helping the authors of new or existing assessments generate norms both at a national and local level. Traditionally, the process of generating the norms includes the following steps:
    • The authors gather a random sample of assessments performed by different sections of the community for which they want to create the norms
    • This data is then entered into a computer system (a spreadsheet or database) to provide the assessment results in an electronic form
    • The authors then generate the norms using the data
    By using SORAF, the authors can get their norm generation algorithms implemented by Cyzap and then can use the system to quickly generate the norms for any population. In addition, as more data becomes available, the system can be used to easily refine and update the norms.

    Finally, since SORAF is a Web-based application, it is possible for the authors to have the different participants of the control group enter their assessments directly into the system, thereby reducing the need to re-enter the assessment data into the computer.
  3. SORAF can also be used by researchers who want to evaluate the effectiveness of combining the results of the different instruments to see which combinations provide the best identification of risk factors.

    Since SORAF is flexible enough to allow the implementation of any assessment tool, and it can be customized to implement client specific business rules, it can be used to aid research where it may be necessary to compare the results of different assessments on an offender.