The Access to Justice Lab
at Harvard Law School
Today we present a final look at key field partners who have helped make the Dane County PSA RCT one of the A2J Lab’s signature series. Check out Part I and Part II as well!
In this installment, we are fortunate to share reflections from three officers of the court: Judge Juan Colás, Commissioner Jason Hanson, and Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne.
[Read more…] about A2J Lab “Behind the Experiment”: Dane County Part III
Today we bring you another look at key field partners who have helped make the Dane County PSA RCT one of the A2J Lab’s signature series. Part I covered the work of the County’s two Assessors, who perform the essential work of populating the PSA’s risk factors and generating its recommendations day in and day out.
[Read more…] about A2J Lab “Behind the Experiment”: Dane County Part II
Last week, we marked the launch of our PSA RCT in Dane County, Wisconsin. Starting today, I will be pulling back the field experiment curtain, as it were, and introducing some of the A2J Lab’s field partners. These Dane County employees have worked tirelessly for almost two years to make the PSA’s implementation and our concurrent evaluation possible.
[Read more…] about A2J Lab “Behind the Experiment”: Dane County Part I
by Sophie Laing
Research Director Chris Griffin blogs from Wisconsin:
The day has finally arrived!
At this afternoon’s initial appearance court in Dane County, WI, the A2J Lab begins its evaluation of the Public Safety Assessment (“PSA”). Criminal process in this jurisdiction now includes additional, scientifically based information in a randomly selected subset of cases to inform pre-disposition release decisions. The judicial official–known here as a Commissioner–receives risk scores and a recommendation for release through the PSA and its static criminal history inputs to consider in reaching those decisions. Check out this video starring Lab affiliate Heidi Liu and yours truly to learn more about the science behind this RCT:
In a previous post, I considered some of the less convincing critiques of pretrial and sentencing risk assessments that sound in the ecological fallacy. The fallacy argument mistakenly targets risk scores as applying only group inferences to individual case decision-making. The takeaway was straightforward. A comprehensive understanding of actuarial tools must include rigorous counterfactual thinking about a state of the world in which they aren’t available. In this follow-up, I discuss an even more serious claim: that actuarial tools might lead to unjustifiable racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes.
[Read more…] about Fear and Loathing over Risk Assessments Part 2
Using empirical research to make the U.S. justice system work better for everyone.