Pretrial Assessments Research Articles

Justice involvement prediction as individuals age: An age-graded evaluation of the public safety assessment.

Some scholars have criticized pretrial assessments for perpetuating racial bias in the criminal legal system by offering biased predictions of future legal system outcomes. Although these critiques have some empirical support, the scholarship has yet to examine the predictive validity and differential prediction of pretrial assessments across individuals by their age. Following the guidance of the life-course literature, the present study serves as the first age-graded evaluation of the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) focused on assessing whether the predictive validity and scoring predictions of the tool vary across the lifespan. We expected that the predictive validity of the PSA scores would vary across the lifespan, such that the PSA underpredicts for younger individuals and overpredicts for older individuals. The present study relied on pretrial information collected from 31,527 individuals during the Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research project. Logistic regression models were estimated to evaluate the differential prediction of the PSA for individuals ranging from 18 to 68 years of age. The results of bivariate models were used to produce area under the curve estimates at each year of age. The results of the present study provided some evidence that the PSA differentially predicted pretrial outcomes for individuals from 18 to 68 years of age. Specifically, the predictive validity of the New Criminal Arrest and the New Violent Criminal Arrest scales appears to improve as individuals become older, suggesting that these instruments are better able to predict pretrial outcomes for older individuals relative to younger individuals. The results suggest that the PSA is a valid predictor of pretrial outcomes and that the predictive validity of some PSA scores is impacted by age. These findings suggest that the age of the defendant should be accounted for when interpreting the new criminal arrest and new violent criminal arrest scores. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Where’s the Bias: No Evidence of Bias by Sex When Testing the Public Safety Assessment

Pretrial assessments are criticized for inherent biases. We conduct research in Kentucky to assess the predictive validity and differential prediction by sex of one pretrial assessment, the Public Safety Assessment (PSA). Our research is unique because we find equal base rates by sex for missing a court date, which allows us to assess for error rate balance by sex. We find the PSA to have predictive validity within acceptable ranges for the criminal legal field. The analyses show a lack of evidence of predictive bias for any arrest or missing a court date, and we find equal error rates for five different error measures. The analyses contribute to methodological debates about how to measure predictive bias with assessments.

Smart Decarceration: Are Pretrial Assessments an Effective Strategy to Detain Fewer People and Reduce Arrests?

Smart Decarceration: Are Pretrial Assessments an Effective Strategy to Detain Fewer People and Reduce Arrests?

Offence type and neurodiversity: A comparison of 12‐17‐year‐old boys charged with a criminal offence by diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or both

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been evidenced as common among adolescents with delinquent behaviour. Less is known, however, about the relationship between these disorders and type of alleged offence, when the adolescent is involved with the criminal justice system. Our aim was to investigate whether the type of alleged index offences among 12-17-year-olds differ between those diagnosed with ASD, ADHD or ASD+ADHD. The sample was selected for ASD and/or ADHD diagnoses from a database of all pre-trial forensic psychiatric and psychological assessments of male adolescents of 12-17years old in the Netherlands for the years 2013 and 2014. For each record, independent researchers scored a 76-item checklist encompassing health and offending characteristics. Sixty-nine of the 1799 pre-trial assessments of these male adolescents had a diagnosis of ASD, 90 of ADHD and 29 had been diagnosed with both; these 188 cases formed our sample. The rate of sex offences was significantly higher among those with ASD (N=20, 29%) than those with ADHD (N=10, 11%) or both (N=4, 14%; Fisher's exact test=8.54; p=0.014). By contrast, the rate of property offences without violence was significantly higher among those with ADHD (N=22, 24%) than those with ASD (N=4, 6%) or both (N=5, 17%; Fisher's exact test=10.50, p=0.004), whereas violent offending rates did not differ between the three groups. Specific offence types were not equally distributed among male adolescents with different psychiatric diagnoses. In our sample of male adolescents suspected of an offence nearly one-third of those diagnosed with ASD were convicted of a sex offence, suggesting highly specialised needs for further assessment and intervention. Among those diagnosed with ADHD, significantly more adolescents were charged with non-violent property offences. Such unequal distribution of alleged offence types among adolescents with different psychiatric diagnoses justifies tailor-made attention for offending adolescents with different psychiatric diagnoses.

Differential Prediction by Race in IRAS-PAT Assessments: An Application of Debiasing Strategies

There remain serious concerns about the potential for pretrial risk assessments to exacerbate racial disparities. Yet, current evidence on differential prediction in pretrial risk assessments is limited. The present investigation tests for differential prediction by race as an indication of bias in Indiana Risk Assessment System–Pretrial Assessment Tool (IRAS-PAT) assessments. Using pooled data drawn from a five-county IRAS-PAT validation, which included 689 Black and 2,850 White defendants, we primarily used a hierarchical regression-based approach to test between-group differences in the slopes of regression lines. Where slope-based bias was present, differential prediction was reevaluated once algorithmic corrections were applied. Findings showed IRAS-PAT assessments produced less accurate predictions of pretrial misconduct for Black defendants relative to White defendants. Only one debiasing strategy—which accounted for item-level differences across subgroups—corrected differential prediction. Debiasing strategies can mitigate differential prediction but may have limited utility for local jurisdictions under current legal frameworks.

The DAPP–SF as a Screener for Personality Disorder in a Forensic Setting

Studies on the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology–Short Form (DAPP–SF) have shown its ability to identify treatment-seeking patients with personality disorders. This study focuses on its screening potential for personality disorder in 89 criminal suspects (77 men, 12 women; M age = 37.0 years) undergoing residential pretrial psychological assessments in a high-security setting. It was expected that Structured Interview for DSM–IV Personality (SIDP–IV) criteria met for personality disorder(s) would be associated with higher DAPP–SF scores. A floor effect was found in DAPP–SF scores: The forensic population reported less personality pathology than the general population. Only moderate associations between DAPP–SF and SIDP–IV outcome were found. Receiver operating characteristic analysis showed that some DAPP–SF subscales did not exceed chance level in their ability to screen for personality disorders. It is concluded that the DAPP–SF has limited usefulness as a screener for personality disorders in a forensic pretrial setting. Alternative forensic screening instruments are presented.

Fitness to stand trial: Court dispositions

Mental health professionals are often called upon by the courts to provide expert opinion evidence to assist the court in dealing fairly with the accused person in the criminal justice system. Common law criteria for fitness to stand trial have evolved over 200 years but remain non‐standardized, varying between countries, while sharing certain core characteristics.The courts most often agree with clinical assessments. This study examines all 1109 pretrial fitness assessments performed at the Forensic Unit of the Calgary General Hospital during the period 1991–1997 and measures the agreement between court decisions and the psychiatric opinions (99.8%). It contrasts this with the performance of instruments designed to measure fitness. It also examines the characteristics of the psychiatric reports, which adopt a semi‐standardized format Suggestions are made about the relative appropriateness of psychiatric reports and fitness instruments being used as expert evidence.

Effects of state organizational structure and forensic examiner training on pretrial competence assessments.

States differ widely in their delivery of pretrial forensic evaluation services, in terms of organizational structure and training requirements of forensic examiners. It was hypothesized that defendants adjudicated incompetent to proceed in states using community-based, private-practitioner systems would show less impairment on a competence assessment measure, the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool-Criminal Adjudication (MacCAT-CA), than defendants adjudicated incompetent in states using traditional, inpatient systems. It also was hypothesized that mean MacCAT-CA scores for incompetent defendants from states requiring forensic training/certification would be lower than for defendants from states lacking such requirements. Results indicated significant differences across the four types of service delivery systems examined. However, planned comparisons revealed no differences between a state using a traditional, inpatient model and a state employing a community-based, private-practitioner model. Analyses examining the effects of mandatory forensic training failed to support the hypothesis that training requirements result in the adoption of higher thresholds for determining incompetence.