Pretrial Risk Assessment and Case Classification: A Case Study Control

Abstract

The primary responsibilities of the Lake County Pretrial Services Program (Illinois) are to provide defendant information to the court relevant to the purposes of the bond decision and to supervise a defendant’s compliance with any and all conditions of bond as so ordered by the court. Given these duties, assessing pretrial failure risk is an essential part of both the bond recommendation process and the supervision classification of the defendant. Indeed we are to some extent obligated to determine—as accurately and consistently as possible—pretrial risk and, in the case of supervising defendants in the community, classify according to that risk. One method of achieving a reliable and impartial assessment is to introduce into the recommendation and classification procedure an objective, independent measure of risk. The intent of the current article is to describe our experience in the development and application of such a measure.