Bringing Data to the Debate on Risk Assessments (2024)

• Current evidence overall signals that risk assessments are not resulting in harsher treatment for individuals with minoritized racial and ethnic identities.

• More than one third of articles in this systematic review found that risk assessments helped decrease pre-existing racial and ethnic disparities in legal decision making.

• Most of the included articles focused on pretrial-related outcomes and a narrow type of risk assessment (e.g., brief pretrial risk screening tools).

• Overall, most studies tended to be methodologically weak. More gold-standard (i.e., pre-post comparison) studies are needed.