United States, Nationwide
US pretrial courts (multiple jurisdictions)
Public Safety Assessment (PSA), supplied by Developed with support from Arnold Ventures; no commercial vendor
OperationalCivil society reportPAI-0A813F79
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- Body
- US pretrial courts (multiple jurisdictions)
- Country
- United States
- Area
- Nationwide
- Technology
- Public Safety Assessment (PSA)
- Supplier
- Developed with support from Arnold Ventures; no commercial vendor
- Status
- Operational
In routine use by the named body, on the evidence of a public source. - Stage
- In use now
- Since
- 2013
- Legal basis
- Arnold Ventures terms of use plus local court rules and statutes
- Oversight
- No formal regulator; ongoing independent validation including MDRC evaluation
- Evidence
- Civil society report
Report by a human rights or civil liberties organisation - Source
- Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research; MDRC evaluation
- Last checked
- Record code
PAI-0A813F79
Notes
An actuarial assessment using nine factors drawn from age and criminal history, explicitly excluding any interview, community ties, neighbourhood or marital status. It produces three estimates: failure to appear, new criminal arrest, and new violent criminal arrest while on pretrial release. Judges consider the scores alongside other information when setting release conditions, and scores are provided to the accused, the judicial officer, defence and prosecution.
Piloted with selected jurisdictions from 2013 and released publicly in 2018 after five years of testing, built on around 750,000 cases from roughly 300 jurisdictions and validated on more than 500,000. Its deliberate exclusion of socio-economic and neighbourhood factors is a direct design response to bias criticism of earlier instruments.
Public Safety Assessment (PSA) elsewhere in United States
See them in the tracker| Deployment | Country | Supplier | Since | Status | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US state courts and corrections agenciesCOMPAS recidivism and pretrial risk scoring | United StatesMultiple US states | Equivant, formerly Northpointe | 2000 | Operational | |
| Wisconsin Department of CorrectionsCOMPAS risk and needs assessment | United StatesWisconsin | — | — | Operational | |
| Thurston County Pretrial ServicesPublic Safety Assessment (PSA) | United StatesWashington | — | 2023 | Operational |