Matthew DeMichele’s research while affiliated with Triangle BioSystems International and other places

Criminal legal systems are increasingly adopting actuarial pretrial assessments which use statistical formulas to estimate individuals’ probability of adhering to pretrial requirements and guide the conditions of their supervision. A large gap in the study of pretrial assessments is due to inattention to implementation of these assessments in real-world settings. We conducted qualitative research examining personnel and data resource factors that influenced adoption and implementation of one pretrial assessment, the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) in seven counties in the United States. Qualitative interviews with legal and community actors were conducted and supplemented with implementation process data to elucidate personnel and data capacity factors impacting PSA adoption and implementation. Findings suggest that generally, jurisdictions with existing pretrial services programs were more likely to adopt the PSA and to encounter fewer barriers to implementation due to personnel and data infrastructure. Implications for PSA adoption and implementation in future pretrial settings are discussed.

This paper provides the results of a thought experiment to see what would have happened if a jurisdiction made release decisions solely based on risk assessment predictions of new arrests. Random forest imputation is used with data from all admissions to a large county jail system (n = 28,188) to forecast new arrests for individuals detained by the court. After imputing outcome rates for the detained, we rank order everyone by their predicted probability of future arrest from lowest to highest probability and compare release and new arrest rates between the predicted outcomes and observed release decisions. The results show the risk-based release approach has the potential to reduce the detained population by 7% and reduce new arrests by 13% compared to current practices.

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented time in the United States, resulting in substantive changes to policy and practice to curb the spread of the virus. This was nowhere more evident than in the criminal legal system where agencies implemented a wide-variety of policies to limit the spread of COVID-19. In addition to limiting the spread, the criminal legal system’s response to the pandemic could have impacted the functioning of the system, potentially reducing the number of and speed at which individuals reencountered the system after an initial booking. To date, however, no research has been conducted to examine how the legal system’s response to the pandemic influenced the speed at which individuals became reinvolved in the system. Through reliance on jail data from five jurisdictions across the United States, the current study examined if being booked into jail after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was associated with the number of days until the individual experienced a subsequent booking into jail. The findings suggested that the legal system’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic delayed individual’s reinvolvement in the criminal legal system, permitting more individuals to live in the community than in a facility. These findings suggest that more research is needed to identify the specific policies and procedures that increased the time until an individual became reinvolved in the system, as it could help diminish the number of individuals processed through the system on multiple occasions.

Research summary This study provides a rigorous assessment of the public safety benefits of pretrial detention by estimating the criminogenic and punitive effects of spending at least 1 week in pretrial detention across three jail systems in two states. We use a doubly robust difference‐in‐differences design to show that pretrial detention increases the odds for someone to miss a court appearance or be arrested by roughly 50% and increases the odds of convictions by 36%. This evidence was support by a series of supplemental analyses demonstrating that spending more than 1 day and spending more than 3 days in pretrial detention increased the odds of negative pretrial outcomes compared to someone who was booked and released from jail. The findings of this study provide evidence that pretrial detention can be counterproductive to public safety in that it leads to increased likelihood that individuals will miss court and be arrested for new crimes. Policy implications Jails are a unique criminal justice contact point because they hold individuals at different stages of case processing, including individuals awaiting trial, and those serving shorter sentences or waiting to be transferred to prison. Pretrial release is arguably one of the most consequential decisions in case processing for an individual. Combining our findings with the punitive and collateral effects of time spent in pretrial detention signals a need for policies to identify effective methods of release that maximize liberty, safety, and equity and minimize the criminogenic effects of pretrial detention. Jails are inhabited with pretrial detainees, detention makes outcomes worse for these detainees, and detention does not deliver on public safety as intended. We argue that a more limited and targeted use of pretrial detention is needed and more research attention on alternatives to pretrial detention.

Domestic radicalization to violent extremism has evolved into the most urgent terrorism threat facing the West. We contribute to research on extremism and role exit processes by demonstrating how identity transformations are linked to the pursuit and avoidance of possible future selves motivated by negative emotional states of shame, embarrassment and guilt. The data are drawn from in-depth life history interviews with 47 former members of US domestic violent extremist groups. The interviewees, who had detailed accounts of childhood maltreatment, abuse and neglect, were vulnerable and looking for belonging, acceptance and significance in their lives. The interviews revealed that the extremist role identity conflicted with other emerging aspects of their selves (e.g. parent, spouse) that created an interaction between negative emotional states (i.e. shame, guilt and embarrassment) and doubts about their group involvement. The internal conflicts and emotional awareness opened individuals to embrace non-extremist versions of themselves. These processes diverted their extremist trajectory by creating doubts, engaging in anticipatory socialization and avoiding a feared possible self.

Purpose: The current study was designed to evaluate the effects of time spent in pretrial detention on the number of days from release until experiencing an arrest for a new offense and a new violent offense. Methods: Using a sample of 31,598 individuals from three counties in the United States, the evaluation estimated the effects of spending 2–3 days, 3–7 days, and >7 days in pretrial detention – compared to admitted to jail and released on the same or next day (0 to 1 day– on the number of days from release until a new criminal arrest and new violent criminal arrest. The primary models were replicated using inverse probability weighting and propensity score matching. Results: The results of the study suggest that spending 2–3 days, 3–7 days, and >7 days in pretrial detention was associated with an increased probability of a new criminal arrest and new violent criminal arrest earlier when compared to spending 0 to 1 day in pretrial detention. Conclusions: This research is consistent with the prior literature, suggesting that spending more time in pretrial detention might be criminogenic and contribute to an increased rate of churn through the criminal legal system.

Objective: 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. Hypotheses: 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. Method: 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. Results: 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. Conclusion: 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.

Pretrial assessment instruments provide courtroom actors with information about the likelihood that someone who has been charged with a criminal offense would engage in criminal behavior if released prior to trial. Although prior research supports the ability of pretrial instruments to predict pretrial outcomes, there are concerns that pretrial instruments may inadvertently exacerbate racial-ethnic and sex disparities found in the larger criminal legal system. In the current study, we conduct multi-site predictive bias tests of a widely used pretrial instrument—the Public Safety Assessment (PSA)—across six racial-ethnic and sex groups (i.e., White males, White females, Black males, Black females, Hispanic males, and Hispanic females). Study results support the PSA as a valid and consistent predictor of failure to appear, new criminal activity, and new violent criminal activity across these six racial-ethnic and sex groups. These findings support the use of the PSA and identify several areas for future research.