Forecasts of Violence to Inform Sentencing Decisions

نویسندگان

  • Richard Berk
  • Justin Bleich
چکیده

Behavioral forecasts have informed parole decisions in the United States since the 1920’s (Borden, 1928; Burgess, 1928). Over the decades, these forecasts have increasingly relied on quantitative methods that some would call actuarial (Messinger and Berk, 1987; Feely and Simon, 1994). Despite jurisprudential concerns and forecasting accuracy that has been di cult to evaluate (Farrington, 2003; Gottfredson and Moriarty, 2006; Harcourt, 2007; Berk, 2008a; 2009; 2012), there is little doubt that these methods are here to stay. Forecasts using even very simple statistical procedures have been shown to consistently perform better than clinical judgements (Monahan, 1981; Hastie and Dawes, 2001), and there is growing support for forecasts of criminal behavior across a range of criminal justice settings in addition to parole hearings: bail determinations, charging, sentencing, and probation/parole supervision (Skeem and Monahan, 2011; Pew Center for the States, 2011; Casey et al., 2011; Berk, 2012). In this paper, we focus on sentencing decisions. There are already jurisdictions that provide judges with quantitative forecasts of risk (Kleinman at al., 2007), and some headed down the same path. For example, a recent Pennsylvania statute authorizes the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing

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تاریخ انتشار 2012