Guest Editor's Observations: Recurring Policy Issues of Guidelines (and non-Guidelines) Sentencing: Risk Assessments, Criminal History Enhancements, and the Enforcement of Release Conditions (original) (raw)

The Use of Risk Assessment at Sentencing: Implications for Research and Policy

2016

At-sentencing risk assessments are predictions of an individual’s statistically likely future criminal conduct. These assessments can be derived from a number of methodologies ranging from unstructured clinical judgment to advanced statistical and actuarial processes. Some assessments consider only correlates of criminal recidivism, while others also take into account criminogenic needs. Assessments of this nature have long been used to classify defendants for treatment and supervision within prisons and on community supervision, but they have only relatively recently begun to be used – or considered for use – during the sentencing process. This shift in application has raised substantial practical and policy challenges and questions. This paper, supported by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, directly addresses these issues and provides information and examples from a range of jurisdictions, including some which have integrated at-sentencing risk assessm...

CONCEPTUALIZING LEGALLY RELEVANT FACTORS UNDER GUIDELINES: A REPLY TO ULMER

Criminology, 2000

In our research note that appears in this issue, we presented the methodological case for including an indicator of the presumptive sentence in analyses of sentencing decisions under guidelines. We argued that this is a convenient way to estimate precisely the prescribed effects of legally relevant variables and that the failure to control for the presumptive sentence may lead to biased estimation of both legal and extralegal effects. Jeffrey Ulmer's thoughtful commentary and reanalysis of the Pennsylvania data (also found in this issue) is precisely the kind of research that we hoped our article would encourage. We are grateful to Professor Ulmer for putting our method to the test in a thorough and even-handed fashion. In this reply, we do two things. First, we offer some additional thoughts on Ulmer's attempt to deal with the model specification problem and the methodological limitations he identifies with our approach. Second, in response to his conceptual reservations, we present a theoretical argument for controlling for the presumptive sentence. We argue that this approach is empirically and conceptually superior to methods that do not do so, is consistent with the sentencing process in the context of guidelines, and is important for testing current theories of sentencing in that context.

1-1-2011 Normative Elements of Parole Risk

2013

School of Law. The genesis of the parole/reentry jury idea came from a very insightful question from Professor Paul Diller during discussion of a prior article; I am sorry I have only now, years later, gotten around to providing at least a preliminary answer. My thinking about the normative components of risk benefited greatly from the discussion in Brian J.