USING THE REFERRAL DECISION SCALE TO SCREEN MENTALLY-ILL JAIL DETAINEES - VALIDITY AND IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

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.