Risk Assessment and Alternatives to Incarceration

Current uses of actuarial risk assessment tools in criminal justice settings serve the purpose of either factoring into sentencing or determining recidivism rate. There is, however, potential for risk assessment tools to be used in diversion away from incarceration altogether. 

As of 2017,  “[Federal Bureau of Prisons] was responsible for overseeing 187,910 inmates and 7,831 of these inmates were considered to have a serious mental illness,”[1] which indicates that approximately 4.2% of currently-incarcerated people in federal prisons are affected by “a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder resulting in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities,” (emphasis added) as defined by the NIH[2]. This statistic does not include the proportion of incarcerated people who meet the criteria for, or suffer from, a substance abuse disorder, which since 2007-2009, has been “58% of state prisoners and two-thirds (63%) of sentenced jail inmates”[3] according to the US Department of Justice. In congruence with this information, the Pew Charitable Trusts found that there is no relationship between a sentenced person’s drug use and the length of their prison term, stated in their 2018 publication[4]; the idea that longer, harsher sentences of incarceration would deter people from continuing drug use habits was not supported by any data. 

Given the prevalence of crimes that arise out of mental illnesses and substance abuse disorders, recidivism and jail or prison populations can be reduced overall through the use of alternatives to incarceration. While in prison, access to quality healthcare is greatly diminished and issues related to substance abuse disorders can be exacerbated by forced abstinence programs[5], resulting in greater recidivism. Interventions that occur within prisons are not adequate enough to sustain beneficial changes for incarcerated people. Instead, interventions can and should be done before someone is sentenced: the introduction of a combination of community outreach workers (COWs) and a pretrial trauma-based assessment to the community would work as effective means for diversion from incarceration. 

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1: “Federal Prisons: Information on Inmates with Serious Mental Illness and Strategies to  Reduce Recidivism.” U.S. Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO), U.S.  Government Accountability Office (U.S. GAO), 15 Feb. 2018, www.gao.gov/products/GAO-18-182.

2: “Mental Illness.” National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human  Services, Feb. 2019, www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness.shtml#part_154784.

3: Bronson, Jennifer, et al. "Drug use, dependence, and abuse among state prisoners and jail inmates,  2007–2009." Washington, DC: United States Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and  Delinquency Prevention (2017).

4: “More Imprisonment Does Not Reduce State Drug Problems.” The Pew Charitable Trusts, The Pew  Charitable Trusts, 8 Mar. 2018,  www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/issue-briefs/2018/03/more-imprisonment-does-not-reduce-state-drug-problems. 

5: “NIH Fact Sheets - Addiction and the Criminal Justice System.” National Institutes of Health, U.S. 

Department of Health and Human Services,  report.nih.gov/NIHfactsheets/ViewFactsheet.aspx?csid=22.