Jesse Russell, PhD, chief program officer of the National Council on Crime
& Delinquency, writes about risk assessments and sentencing for The
Crime Report. Below is an excerpt:
Risk assessment, at its best, can reduce bias in decision
making. At its worst, it can propagate bias.
This is exactly why using risk assessment for sentencing in
adult corrections is troubling. The adult corrections system is often racially
biased and overwhelmingly punitive in nature. Risk assessments used at
sentencing are being used to drive punishment as the risk score moves higher.
In a racially biased system, or in a society that has
inequities, risk assessment will create a disproportionate impact on a
particular group, in this case, African Americans.
The key fact we need to keep in mind is that before risk
assessment has any chance to influence any individual’s corrections
involvement, a long list of other factors has already established inequity in
the system.
For example:
Federal housing policies like redlining made it difficult
for some communities to sustain intergenerational economic prosperity;
Financial redlining created pockets of underserved
communities with few resources that have been linked to higher arrest rates;
Policing practices have unfairly targeted black and
African-American communities;
Drug sentencing laws have had disproportionate impacts on
black and African-American communities;
Implicit biases affect how threatening African Americans are
perceived to be by decision makers, as compared to whites.
A history of institutionalized disenfranchisement of
African-American communities has eroded the representativeness of
democracy.
The destructive myth of the African-American “super
predator” has shaped criminal justice policy and practice.
Until and unless these types of structural and implicit
inequities are resolved and untethered from the adult corrections system, use
of fair and equitable risk assessment tools will not be sufficient to transform
adult corrections in the United States.
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