In this episode of Data Points, Drs. Samantha Zottola and Kamiya Stewart discuss their research, “Pretrial Risk Assessment, Risk Communication, and Racial Bias,” and how their findings apply to the ways pretrial risk assessment instruments are communicated to judges and other pretrial decision makers.
The Pretrial Paradox
The criminal legal system’s pretrial phase can be a complex puzzle. What happens when an individual is arrested but not yet convicted of a crime? Often, a judge or magistrate must decide whether the person will be held in jail or released to their community while they await their trial.
Pretrial Risk Assessment Instruments in the Initial Appearance
A person’s initial appearance before a judge or magistrate is a critical moment in the pretrial process where decisions are made regarding charges, legal representation, and pretrial release. Pretrial risk assessment instruments can play an important role in this process, evaluating factors such as criminal history, charge nature, and past court appearances. These factors are scored and summed to estimate a person’s risk of failing to appear in court or being rearrested. The results of these assessments provide judges, magistrates, and other decision-makers with an estimate of risk that they can use to help inform decisions for pretrial release.
The Research Journey
Dr. Zottola and Dr. Stewart investigated how different presentations of pretrial risk assessment results influence decisions, with a particular focus on potential racial disparities. By creating scenarios for pretrial court actors in which assessment results were presented in different ways, they assessed pretrial court actors’ use of risk assessment results when making a decision about whether a person should be detained or released during the pretrial period.
Research Findings: Money Bail vs. Pretrial Risk Assessments
The main finding from the study was that differences in how pretrial risk assessment results are presented to pretrial court actors did not impact their release decisions. Another finding from the study was that pretrial court actors were inconsistent in aligning their decisions with the pretrial risk assessment results, particularly in cases involving Black and/or African American individuals. This trend could indicate racial bias within the decision-making process, underscoring the critical need for additional research into pretrial court actor’s application of pretrial risk assessment results to inform pretrial release decisions.
The Call for Systemic Change
What does this mean for the criminal legal system? Dr. Zottola and Dr. Stewart recommend the implementation of trainings programs to ensure pretrial court actors are applying pretrial risk assessment results to decisions in the same way for all individuals. They also recommend systems for regular feedback and evaluations to monitor and correct, when needed, the application of pretrial risk assessment results.
Conclusion
Findings from this study fail to support the suggestion that making changes to the way assessment results are presented is a strategy to increase pretrial release rates or reduce racial disparities. This study also underscores the need for efforts to ensure equitable application of risk assessment results for people of color.
This blog post was developed with the assistance of generative artificial intelligence.