Re-visioning risk assessment for human service decision making

Abstract

This article examines the usefulness of actuarial risk assessment for high-stakes decision making in child welfare, mental health, criminal justice and juvenile justice. Review of the literature affirms the potential benefits of risk assessment instruments for decision making by human service professionals. However, research also hints at the underutilization of risk assessment in practice. Although a number of explanations may account for this, the needs of decision makers in the real world of day to day practice has received little attention in the literature. This article identifies insights from the Recognition primed decision making theory (RPD) that promise to strengthen the utility of actuarial risk assessment instruments. It argues that an actuarial risk assessment instrument, based on appropriate causal theory, would have a greater likelihood of utilization as compared to the a-theoretical instruments that predominate in current structured decision making systems.