By: Genie Jackson, Research Team Lead, equivant Supervision + Pretrial
There are many pretrial risk assessment tools available to pretrial professionals; although all are designed to produce information to support pretrial decisions while still allowing for judicial discretion, not all are created equal. Recent counts suggest there are almost 30 different pretrial risk assessment tools being used in various jurisdictions across the United States.* The variety of pretrial assessment tools differ in how they estimate risk, the factors they assess, and the information necessary to complete the assessments.
In general, pretrial risk assessment tools may include some combination of the following: defendant age, substance use, criminal history, including violence and failure to appear, active community supervision, pending/current charge(s), employment and housing stability, education, family/peer relationships, and community ties. However, there has been a shift in the balance away from items or approaches that could introduce bias towards strictly objective items that are based on empirical evidence. Sometimes this movement is driven by state regulations, sometimes it is driven by pretrial reform and industry experts.
While all pretrial assessment tools have merit, equivant Pretrial’s validated pretrial assessment tool (CAPA-R) stands apart in the following ways:
- Bias Reduction: Validated tools are designed to minimize bias through their structured design, subject matter of questions, and the way information is gathered. When the San Diego Sheriff’s Department approached equivant Pretrial in anticipation of California’s new pretrial assessment regulations, we worked with them to develop the California Pretrial Assessment-Revised (CAPA-R).
- Brevity: the equivant Pretrial-designed CAPA-R consists of eight items, the answers to which are drawn exclusively from criminal history records and the current case, eliminating interview elements or questions that could introduce bias like residential and employment information.
- Transparency in Scoring: equivant’s CAPA-R utilizes an additive point scoring system which can be administered, scored, and interpreted with ease, addressing the need for full transparency in the pretrial process.
- Single Score to Measure Risk of Failure to Appear and Risk of New Criminal Activity: This single score provides practitioners with one less thing to worry about as their responsibility for pretrial assessments continues to grow.
- Legal Admissibility: Validated tools are more likely to meet legal admissibility standards in court which becomes important from a risk mitigation perspective.
It is imperative for pretrial professionals to evaluate the effectiveness and validity of the pretrial assessments they are using for their client populations. With pretrial reform sweeping the nation, it’s important to know you have a partner with whom to navigate the changes. If you would like to audit your pretrial assessments or process, please reach out to our team.
*It is important to note that post-conviction risk and needs instruments (COMPAS, LSI-R, ORAS-CST, etc.) were not developed to assess pretrial risks such as Failure-to-Appear (FTA) or New Criminal Activity (NCA). For more information about the Northpointe Suite’s library of validated post-conviction instruments, click here.
