The Trouble with Using Risk Assessment Instruments to Quantify the Chance of Future Offending

Abstract

Risk assessments in carceral settings have proliferated in recent decades and are now prominent in numerous states and regions. A ubiquitous variety is actuarial risk assessment instruments that are used on children and adults to predict their future chance for misconduct (e.g., recidivism) in several vital decision points in carceral processing (e.g., pretrial confinement). These instruments rely on information about past behavior (e.g., criminal history) and an understanding of offending (e.g., antisocial personality) that is thought to be neutral, reliable, and enjoys predictive validity. However, it will be argued that when justice system personnel assess the chance of unwanted behavior in the future, several risk domains are differentially prevalent and more frequently experienced by some groups. Much of this disparity is caused by, or due to, forces external to those being assessed, for instance, inequitable social and economic conditions and inequitable decisions by justice personnel to arrest, charge, or sentence people of color. As such, risk assessment instruments inevitably and disproportionately mark some groups of people as a higher risk to violate rules, conditions, orders, or laws. Consequently, risk assessment instruments systematically disfavor disadvantage, and by inference, favor advantage, leading to the need for a radical shift in the taxonomy of classifying risk for future misconduct.