Pretrial Risk Assessment Tool Adoption and Pretrial Operations

A handful of studies are developing and validating pretrial risk assessment tools to predict failure to appear and new offenses. A growing body of research literature examines the effect of pretrial risk assessment scores or classifications on release or post-conviction sentence decisions. Another line of inquiry considers the ability of these tools to mitigate or unintentionally amplify race, class, and sex biases in the justice system. There is an underdeveloped understanding of how pretrial risk assessment scores or classifications influence the behaviors of courtroom workgroup members and affiliated justice system stakeholders, which in turn, contribute to local operations. This chapter will summarize what is known and remains to be examined about the adoption of pretrial risk assessment tools on pretrial functioning. The limitations inherent to this body of work will be identified to direct future research and facilitate the development of local policy, procedures, and evaluations. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of the current knowledge base and charts a research agenda to move pretrial operations research forward. Insights from Indiana’s pretrial initiative, an effort involving 11 jurisdictions who were early adopters of a statewide risk assessment tool, will be integrated throughout the chapter for illustrative purposes.