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Studying Pretrial Processes and Decision Making
Research conducted by RTI International (RTI) will examine pretrial practices, policies, and norms. Other research activities will focus on the relationship between release conditions, including financial conditions of release, and pretrial outcomes such as appearing for court dates and remaining arrest-free.
Why It Matters
Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) Research-Action Sites provide an opportunity to learn how implementing the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) changes the ways that pretrial decisions are made and how these decisions affect people’s lives. RTI’s research will contribute to the national dialogue about the value of actuarial pretrial assessments and the role they may play in reducing or eliminating financial conditions of release, improving human decision making, and maximizing pretrial release, court appearance, and community well-being and safety.
Pretrial Outcomes and Conditions of ReleaseUnderstand these important pretrial terms.
Pretrial outcomes refer to the only two outcomes that can legally be considered when making decisions regarding pretrial release. Those outcomes are the rates of court appearance and community safety (meaning the frequency that individuals released before trial remain arrest-free while their cases are pending).
Conditions of release are the conditions that may be imposed on a person released pretrial to reasonably ensure the person returns to court, stays away from specified people or places, and remains crime-free while the case is pending. Conditions may be financial, nonfinancial, or both. Read APPR’s Pretrial Research Summaries to understand the effectiveness of common release conditions based on current research.
APPR’s glossary of pretrial terms brings clarity to important conversations about how best to achieve APPR’s vision of fair, just, and effective pretrial practices, every day, throughout the nation.
For questions about RTI’s research on pretrial processes and decision making, contact Pamela Lattimore.
Research Activities and Methods
RTI’s studies of pretrial processes and decision making include the following:
PSA and Pretrial Decision Making. RTI will analyze data from before and after PSA implementation in the Research-Action Sites to understand whether having assessment results influences pretrial release decisions and, if so, how. For example, does providing judicial officers with PSA scores change their decisions about whether to release people or the conditions they impose? RTI will also examine whether the use of the PSA affects racial, ethnic, or gender disparities in decision making.
Predictive Accuracy. RTI will study whether the PSA can be modified to produce scores that more accurately estimate people’s likelihood of success while on pretrial release. Research and data show that very few people on pretrial release are arrested for a violent crime. More fine-tuned scores may better classify people and assist in identifying those who would benefit from services and supports to succeed during the pretrial period. RTI will explore machine learning techniques in addition to traditional statistical methods to determine if rare outcomes can be accurately predicted during pretrial periods.
Assessment Factors. RTI will explore whether less complex data can generate equally reliable scores for pretrial outcomes such as court appearances, new arrests, and new violent arrests. For example, how do factors of recent arrest and recent conviction history compare to factors of lifetime arrest and lifetime conviction history? RTI will analyze how these factors affect accurate classification of people as more likely or less likely to succeed while on pretrial release. This is important because older criminal history records are more likely to be missing or incomplete compared to more recent data.
Release Conditions and Pretrial Outcomes. RTI will study the relationship between the conditions imposed on people who are released pretrial and their court appearances and arrest-free behavior. It will examine whether financial conditions (such as money bond), location monitoring, home arrest, and other conditions have an impact on people’s employment, family ties, likelihood of appearing in court, and other aspects of their lives.
