Bm. Veysey et al., USING THE REFERRAL DECISION SCALE TO SCREEN MENTALLY-ILL JAIL DETAINEES - VALIDITY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES, Law and human behavior, 22(2), 1998, pp. 205-215
The prevalence of serious mental illnesses in jail populations is sign
ificantly greater than in the general population. Identifying individu
als who warrant psychiatric evaluations is important and benefits corr
ectional staff as well as detainees. One widely used screening instrum
ent intended for this task is the Referral Decision Scale (RDS). This
paper reviews the development and validation of the RDS. Using data fr
om a multisite study which assessed postrelease outcomes for detainees
with mental illness, various types of validity are addressed The resu
lts confirm that the RDS has some inherent characteristics that seriou
sly limit its practical application as a screening instrument for use
by correctional staff.