How to Fill Out the SAVRY Youth Violence Risk Assessment Form

Filling out the SAVRY means working through a 24-item structured professional judgment form on an adolescent aged twelve to eighteen: you gather records and conduct interviews, rate each risk item as low, moderate, or high, mark each of six protective factors as present or absent, and then assign a Final Summary Risk Rating of low, moderate, or high based on your weighing of the evidence rather than any total score.¹ The form is not a test with a cutoff. Every rating you enter is anchored to the operational definitions in the professional manual, and your final judgment has to be defensible in writing.

Before You Start: Credentials and Materials

The SAVRY is a proprietary instrument sold by Psychological Assessment Resources (PAR). The Introductory Kit, which includes the professional manual and blank rating forms, costs $197 and is restricted to purchasers who meet a qualification level of “S”: a degree, certificate, or license in a healthcare or related field. Psychologists, psychiatrists, juvenile probation officers, mental health counselors, and social workers are among the eligible professions.²

You need the manual in front of you when you rate the form. It contains the item-by-item operational definitions that separate a “moderate” from a “high” on each factor, and those definitions are what keep your ratings consistent with other trained evaluators. Beyond the credential itself, evaluators should have training and experience in youth assessment, an understanding of adolescent development, and familiarity with conducting risk assessments.³ There is no single mandatory SAVRY certification. Most agencies that use the tool require their own in-house or vendor-led training before staff administer it.

Information to Collect First

A reliable rating starts with the file, not the form. The manual calls for multiple data sources so you can cross-check what the youth tells you against what the records show.² At a minimum, collect:

Police and court records, including arrest reports, petitions, disposition orders, and any prior risk assessments.
School records covering attendance, disciplinary referrals, grades, and any individualized education plan.
Clinical records: mental health evaluations, substance use treatment notes, and psychiatric hospitalization summaries.
Separate interviews with the youth, with at least one parent or caregiver, and where possible with a teacher, caseworker, or other involved adult.

Records can be scored reliably on their own only when the file is deep enough. When files are thin, accuracy drops.³ Interviews matter most for dynamic items like current anger management, peer relationships, and attitude toward intervention, because records tell you what already happened while the interview tells you where the youth is now.

Rating the 24 Risk Items

The 24 risk items sit in three domains. You rate each one low, moderate, or high, using the manual’s operational definitions as your anchor.¹

Historical Risk Factors (10 items)

These are the most static items because they describe events that have already happened. They cover history of violence, history of non-violent offending, early initiation of violence, past supervision or intervention failures, history of self-harm or suicide attempts, exposure to violence at home, childhood maltreatment, parental or caregiver criminality, early caregiver disruption, and poor school achievement.¹ For most of these, your ratings will come primarily from records: court files, child welfare history, school transcripts, and prior clinical assessments.

Social and Contextual Risk Factors (6 items)

The second domain looks at the youth’s current environment: peer delinquency, peer rejection, stress and poor coping, poor parental management, lack of personal or social support, and community disorganization.³ These items are dynamic. Rate them based on the current picture, not on where things stood a year ago. If the youth has changed schools, moved households, or lost a supportive relative in the last few months, the rating should reflect that. The manual describes how recent a change needs to be before you adjust a rating.

Individual and Clinical Risk Factors (8 items)

The third domain covers the adolescent’s psychological functioning: negative attitudes, risk-taking and impulsivity, substance use difficulties, anger management problems, low empathy or remorse, attention deficit or hyperactivity difficulties, poor compliance, and low interest or commitment to school.³ The interview drives most of these ratings. What the youth says, how they say it, and what the caregiver observes at home all feed the rating in ways that a records-only review cannot.

Two Rules That Apply to Every Item

There are no point values. The SAVRY is not designed to produce a summed score, and the manual warns against treating it like one.⁴ A “high” on an item does not mean the youth is dangerous. It means that particular factor is strongly present in the case, matched to the manual’s definition of “high” for that item.

Document your sources for each rating. A probation report and a clinical interview might both inform your rating of anger management; school records alone might drive your rating of academic achievement. Noting the sources on the form or in a companion narrative makes your reasoning transparent if the assessment is later reviewed or challenged in court. If you cannot point to specific evidence matching the manual’s description, the rating is not defensible; reconsider it.

Rating the Six Protective Factors

Protective factors are scored differently. Each of the six is marked simply as present or absent, not on a three-level scale.¹ The six are prosocial involvement, strong social support, strong attachments and bonds, positive attitude toward intervention and authority, strong commitment to school, and resilient personality traits.³

Protective factors are not the mirror image of risk factors. A youth can rate high on anger management problems and still have a strong commitment to school. Including these items forces the evaluation to capture strengths as well as deficits, and the presence of several of them can reasonably pull your final judgment toward a lower risk level even when some risk items are elevated.

Arriving at the Final Summary Risk Rating

The Final Summary Risk Rating is your overall professional judgment that the youth poses a low, moderate, or high risk of future violence within a specified timeframe. This is the most consequential entry on the form, and it is where structured professional judgment departs most clearly from actuarial tools. You are not averaging or crossing a threshold. You are weighing the number of risk factors, their specific combination in this case, which protective factors are present, and any case-specific considerations that the standard 24 items do not capture.¹

Case-specific factors are risks or strengths unique to the individual that fall outside the SAVRY’s standard items. Gang involvement is one common example. Research has found that evaluators often struggle with how to incorporate such factors consistently, and the literature calls for further training on this point.⁵ If you identify one, note it on the form and explain in your narrative how it shaped your final rating.

Write out that narrative. The final rating drives real outcomes: a high rating often supports secure detention or residential placement, while a low rating may support diversion into community-based programming. A “high” with no explanation is indefensible in court, and a “low” that ignores several elevated risk items will be challenged just as quickly. Your narrative should identify which factors drove the judgment, which protective factors offset which risks, and what case-specific considerations you weighed.

When to Reassess

Because most items are dynamic, a completed SAVRY is a snapshot, not a permanent label. The manual does not prescribe a fixed reassessment schedule, and agencies set their own. The Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice, for instance, requires a full SAVRY reassessment every six months for youth in secure care, with supervisory-level reviews every 90 days in between.⁶

Significant events should also trigger a new assessment: completion of substance abuse treatment, a change in living placement, or a new violent incident. Treating the original rating as permanent defeats the purpose of a tool built to measure change.

What the SAVRY Does Not Measure

Keep the tool inside its scope. The SAVRY assesses risk for violence in adolescents aged twelve to eighteen. It should not be used to predict sexual offending, general recidivism outside the violence domain, or adult behavior beyond the eighteen-year-old age ceiling. A report that stretches the instrument beyond what it was designed to measure invites exclusion.

1
EARL SAVRY ERASOR. About SAVRY
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PAR. SAVRY Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth
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Risk Management Authority. Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY)
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Risk Management Authority. SAVRY Youth Violence Risk Assessment Form
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Academia. The Professional Use of SAVRY Case-Specific Risk and Protective Factors: A Content Analysis
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Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice. YS Policy B.2.14 – Secure Care SAVRY