Classification for Risk

Officials assessing the risks to be taken with alleged or convicted offenders have traditionally been guided only by their subjective deliberations on each case. Subcultural norms shape such risk determinations, and psychological processes result in the decision makers judging carelessly or in a biased fashion but being overconfident about the wisdom of their decisions. Statistical tabulations that provided ways of identifying relative risk from past experience were extolled at first as remedies for the defects of subjective risk assessment. They were not much used in criminal justice agencies, however, until they were developed collaboratively by researchers and officials, and they dealt not only with risk assessment but also with other central concerns in the decisions for which they were employed. They now have very diverse forms and applications but are not used nearly as much or as well as they could be.