Sensible Pretrial Reform: The Importance of Accounting for Risk of Violence in Judicial Release Decisions

Abstract

This study uses data collected from three diverse counties in the United States between 2017 and 2019 to compare the performance of a pretrial risk instrument—the Public Safety Assessment (or PSA)—to a revised version of the tool that accounts for risk of future violence in predicting three pretrial release outcomes. Results indicate the suggested three tiered release levels produced from the current PSA release conditions matrix (RCM) are better at predicting failure to appear in court, while those generated from the violence-informed RCM are better at predicting arrest for a new violent crime. The suggested release levels from both versions of the RCM were similarly able to distinguish between likelihood of a new arrest for any reason.