Risk Assessment tools and their Effectiveness
Article one by Myburgh, et al., (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service)
The pretrial population has been increasing in the prisons at an alarming rate. The high population of this group is one of the causes of so much pressure on the prison system. While there is always need for people to face justice there is also a focus on the cost of the justice system. There are some approaches that might rather be cheaper when dispensing justice rather than focusing on locking people up. More importantly identifying some of the risk factors could help in reducing the population in the prison system. In the recent years, there has been the focus on the development of the Partial Risk assessment instruments that focus on the assessing the defendant risk of failing to appear or committing new crimes prior to their date of trial. The articles thus take a look at some of the important tools that can be used in making such an assessment. The focus is to identify tools that might provide the valuable data that can aid in making decisions on whether an individual should be released pending trail or they should stay within the confines of the prison. There is the need to come up with these tools, since they would eventually help in reducing the problems that come from the ballooning number of people in the prison system.
Summary
The paper looks at the pretrial process and the factors that control the current pretrial practice. The process is focused on having a better understanding of the individual’s life and the aspect that might make them to be of a flight risk in case they are set free. One of the focuses of the article is on the process of partial risk assessment. There is a shift in the process and seeks to focus on moving towards objective decision making, more favorable sentence outcomes and the financial pressure on the justice system and the defendants. Therefore, the system seeks to focus on approaches that might mitigate these issues and ensure that the trial system carries out its responsibility in a more responsive way. The paper then looks at some of the tools that are currently in use and how effective they are. In looking at these assessment tools, they often focus on the risk factors that predict the future of the pretrial failure.
Thesis
The factors, fall into the broad categories of individual, economic, social and criminal factors. The paper thus focuses in looking at these factors and how effective they are in predicting the future of a pretrial.
One thing that seems clear is that there is little research that has been done on the effectiveness of these factors in predicting the risk characteristics of an individual.
Method
The study seeks to make a comparison of the methods used in Canada and the United States. Through the comparison of the process in the different counties it becomes easier to look at the aspects that are working within the jurisdiction in relation to the system in the US. The data from these other countries can provide a good approach to make an analysis of the system in the country and thus provide a recommendation that can be made on the system in the country.
Conclusion
The paper makes the conclusion that there is an increase in the use of pretrial risk assessment in the correction system in the county. The reason for using this approach has been motivated by the need for more objective decisions making regarding pretrial outcomes and moving away from imposing financial bond on the pretrial defendants. One thing that comes out is that the pretrial release, results to more positive outcomes for the defendants. Furthermore the PTRA has resulted to decreases jail uses, increased court efficiency and increased level of pretrial release. Therefore, there is need to put more emphasis on the use of the system within the justice department. The paper provides a number of considerations that might inform the approach that can be used to deal with the pretrial release.
Support article by DeMichele, et al.
The article helps to provide more insight on the understanding of the PTRA and the perception that the judges and other official within the justice system have about the issue. The need to address this issue is because there is no succinct data that shows whether the officials within the system prefer the use of the pretrial assessment or not. However, one thing that seems to stand out is that the focus of the justice system is to make informed decisions about an individual case with much ease. The focus is not only on making informed decisions, but also on making these decisions in a manner that can provide reprieve for both the justice system and the defendant. The focus of the justice system is not always to lock people behind bars. This is more important especially for individual that have committed minor offenses. The author suggests that locking these people up behind bars only increases the cost the government uses in keeping them. It is much cheaper when these people are out of the prison system than when they are in.
Support
The article provides an insight into how the risk assessment in the criminal justice system works, thus providing a better understanding of its application. The author argues that the assessment is a tool that is used to ensure that cases of racial disparities are reduced in the judicial decision making. They play an important role in the predicting the likelihood of various outcomes including the failure of one to appear during trial. By providing data on the person’s probability to appear during the trails the court can make decisions on whether the individual might be given a chance to go free and await trial. The article thus supports the fact that the courts decisions to set more people free as they await trail is not only beneficial to the justice system but also important to the individual.
One of the supportive arguments presented by the author of the article is on the roles that the tools play in identifying the risk factors in an individual. While some methods of assessment might fail to provide comprehensive insight on the decisions that the judges can make about a case, the author supports the idea of using the four broad indicators then narrowing down to the specific aspects that can determine the risk factors in an individual. The paper supports the theory that focusing on this aspect is the most effective ways that the justice system can find data to make decision about an individual.
Over the years there has been so much call on the need for reform within the justice system. Some pundits have always argued that the system leads to a lot of wastage of resources that could have helped in reforming the society. Therefore the use of the risk assessment techniques could be one of the approaches that could help in reducing the problems that are facing the justice system. Through the analysis of an individual’s culpability to abide by the courts requirement one can be let free to continue with their life as they wait for trail as opposed to spending more resources in locking these people behind bars. There is need to implement this system in a more robust way, since evidence show that the regions that have implemented the system experience low cases of pretrial imprisonment and besides the outcomes are positive for both the courts and the individuals.
Post assessment
Article 2 by Lowenkamp, et al., (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service)
Once an individual has been arraigned in court and they are found guilty the role of the justice system is to find the best correctional approaches that can suit the individual. However, the challenge that many of the correctional system face is to find the right correctional approach for a specific individual. Many often think that incarcerating a person is in itself the best way to correct an individual. However, research has shown that the mere fact of incarceration does not deter one from possible crime activities ones they are out of prison. In fact there is evidence that shows that most of the individuals that have once been in jail are more prone to committing offenses than individuals that have never been in prison. Looking at these circumstances, it thus begs the question of the role that the prison system plays. Is it only enough to put people behind bars? While seeking to answer this question the justice department in the US developed different correctional practices that can help people to turn away from their criminal activities once they have served their sentence. However, in order to know the best practice to place an individual there was need to have an assessment.
Thesis
Comprehensive assessments of relevant factors that push one to crime provide the indicator of the best evidence based practices to correct an individual.
Summary
The focus of the article is to take a look at the application of PCRA. There is need to understand the highest risk offenders and thus design intervention programs that might provide working solutions to the group. More importantly, in trying to determine and make decisions on the programs that can work for an individual there is often need to have data that can clearly, offer direction on the programs to take. It is at this point that risk analysis comes into play. The purpose of risk assessment is to provide the major indicators that can be used to understand how vulnerable an individual is to crime and the factors that might lead them to the same practices. The author argues that in the cases where the program is implemented properly the interventions subjected to the offender should be relevant to the criminogenic or crime producing targets. Therefore, the need to understand these crime producing targets is essential. The criminogenic factors might vary from one individual to the other. However, there is a framework that can help in putting different individual in different groups and thus making it easy to identify these factors. The article thus seeks to look at the PCRA approaches and how they have been implemented in the various courts around the country. The main idea is to understand whether these approaches are effective in providing retribution to the individual and whether they can effectively identify the risk factors in an individual.
Method
The method that is used in data collection focused on post supervision cases. The first hand study provides primary data that might help to show a clear linkage between the programs and their effectiveness. The study seeks to focus on various data elements such as the race, sex, ethnicity, and age. Taking a focus on these different groups might be important in understanding the risk factors. Different groups might be subjected to different risk factors. The study focused on looking at how these elements bring about the difference in the intervention mechanisms. With such data it becomes easier for the correctional department to understand how to structure the intervention strategies based on the varying factors. The data from the study shows that the PCRA is the most effective risk assessment tool for use in rectifying individuals and helping them to get back to the society. Therefore, the PCRA can be used to implement risk principle that can help in assessment and classification of offenders. The risk assessment for post-conviction mechanism should focus on understanding individual risk characteristics and how these characteristics might influence an individual to get back to crime. Although there are many other approaches that pundit’s process the PCRA seems to offer the most effective approach of dealing with these issues.
Conclusion
The PCRA is a scientific based tool that was developed to increase the efficiency of post-conviction and supervision. The main aim of the program is to offer officers with the approach to they can use to identify individuals that are the greatest risk of getting back to crime and failing on supervision. While the role of the justice system is to correct individual and make it possible for these individuals to get back to the society and be well integrated, at times the failure to identify the risk factors might make it hard to rehabilitate these individuals. Therefore, the United States probation system focuses on the use of evidence based practices that can provide scientific data that can offer direction in the process of supervision. The focus of the program is to over maximum, measurable reductions in recidivism.
Support
The Risks and Rewards of Risk Assessments
The focus of risk assessment is to ensure that the courts become preventive and not reactive in the dealing with crime. The focus of the courts is on identifying the aspect that push an individual towards crime and providing some effective approaches that can focus on preventing these crimes from happening. In being able to deal with crime, one of the focus areas would be on predicting the future crime. However, it would not be easy to predict these crimes without the development of the right algorithm. In the recent past there has been a concerted effort by the justice system to develop the right algorithms that could be used to predict crime and thus make the courts to be proactive in dealing with these issues. The focus of these efforts is not much on the entire society but more importantly on the individual that have been convicted before. The focus of the algorithm is to give the judges a tool that can help in predicting who will return to the courts for future proceeding and who will not. Besides, it can help to show the individuals that would probably commit serious crimes while waiting court dates and those that would probably turn their life’s around. Therefore, the focus of the system is to help the judge get the vital data that could help in determining the intervention techniques that could help an individual turn around.
This article provides so much insight on the need for predictive approaches in dealing with crime. The courts should not only focus on incarcerating individual but also focusing on ensuring that they recommend approaches that would ensure that these individuals do not only serve their sentence but after serving these sentences they might avoid falling back into crime. While this article focuses on the use of technology, it focuses on the idea of identifying the risk factors that can aid in decisions making. This is the same focus that is proposed by the PCRA system. While the system is taking a keen interest in understanding the factors that might lead an individual back to crime it does not focus on the use of technology. However, in this article there is more focus on the role that technology can play in the process. Technology offers more tools of analysis and prediction due to the use of sophisticated algorithm. The author argues that the future might see the incorporation of these algorithms in dealing with crime.
Bedsides, the focus of the algorithm is to provide information on the person to target for correction intervention, the characteristics needed to address, and how to deliver supervision and treatment in a way that produces the best outcomes. The major focus of the justice system should be on developing measures that makes people more adaptable to the society once they come out of prison. In doing this, there is need to have scientific data that can help in decisions making. Therefore, the use of the technological approaches can provide easier access to such information.
Conclusion
Over the years there have been several efforts that have sought to find a solution to the recurrent criminal activities. Recurrent criminal activities often occur among individuals that have once been convicted. There is a lot of data that shows that some of these individual would often resort back to crime ones they have served their sentence. While there are some that reform while they have served their sentences, there are some that do not reform. Therefore, there is needed to look at factors that make other susceptible to getting back to crime and deal with those factors. The combination of both the PCRA and technological approaches might help in effectively dealing with these issues.
References
DeMichele, M., Baumgartner, P., Barrick, K., Comfort, M., Scaggs, S., & Misra, S. (2018: 2024 – Write My Essay For Me | Essay Writing Service For Your Papers Online). What do Criminal Justice Professionals Think About Risk Assessment at Pretrial?.
Lowenkamp, C. T., Holsinger, A. M., & Cohen, T. H. (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). PCRA revisited: Testing the validity of the Federal Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA). Psychological Services, 12(2), 149.
Myburgh, J. E., Camman, C., & Wormith, J. S. (2015 – Research Paper Writing Help Service). Review of Pretrial Risk Assessment and Factors Predicting Pretrial Release Failure.
The Risks and Rewards of Risk Assessments. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.ncsc.org/sitecore/content/microsites/trends/home/Monthly-Trends-Articles/2017/The-Risks-and-Rewards-of-Risk-Assessments.aspx
