The assessment of ‘risk’ using standardized tools has become commonplace in social work roles across most human service organizations internationally. Despite the critiques of risk assessment tools as sustaining the status quo and disguising social oppressions, they continue to be applied by social workers to marginalized populations. This article presents the findings from a systematic analysis of the juvenile justice risk assessment tool, the Youth Level of Service Inventory-Australian Adapted version, used in NSW, Australia. Drawing on concepts from critical race scholarship and governmentality studies, this analysis found that constructions of the tool as ‘neutral’ and ‘scientific’ function to produce specific types of subjects and conceal the racist and classist discourses that underlie risk assessment tools. This article contributes to social work knowledge in the field of youth justice, as well as social work more broadly, as it encourages a serious reconsideration of the taken-for-granted discourses that operate within standardized assessment tools and promotes ways to make space for alternative and socially just practices.