Mapping Pretrial Injustice:

The Danger

Pretrial risk assessment tools (RATs) can embed racial, gender, and economic bias into the factors they use and the predictions they produce, but they frame those predictions as “science.” RATs have the capacity to vastly over-inflate and over-predict risk.

In order to organize effectively to end pretrial incarceration, we need to understand what goes into these tools and how they impact pretrial decisions.

The Impact

Risk assessment tools (RATs) fold into the pretrial process in different ways, depending on jurisdiction. Who RATs assess, who does the assessing, when RATs are embedded into the pretrial systems, and the impact RATs have on bail, pretrial release, and e-carceration all vary from place to place.

Supporters of RATs claim RATs will reduce both pretrial jail populations and racial disparities in pretrial detention. But independent studies have shown mixed results, and RATs are not always used as intended.

National Landscape

States and counties are embedding pretrial risk assessments into pretrial decision-making all over the country. As of Fall 2019, our research found at least one pretrial tool in use in every state except Massachusetts, Arkansas, Wyoming, and Mississippi.

Look for your state or county in the map below, then click on the link for more information. You’ll be able to get access to the master spreadsheet with more information on what we learned about RATs and pretrial systems in your county, and to find our summaries of interviews with some pretrial decision-makers nationwide.

Our Research

Movement Alliance Project has spent almost three years gathering data on pretrial risk assessments. We have conducted interviews with pretrial service administrators and staff who handle risk assessments on a daily basis, and we have scoured the web to map out where and how pretrial RATs are deployed in hundreds of communities across the United States.

Our research was conducted by a team of organizers, interns, researchers, and local activists. We did NOT get a snapshot of every single tool in use across the country, and we could not track every change in how jurisdictions use these tools over time. It is very possible that there are more tools out there that we do not have information on yet, and it is possible that the data collected in our interviews isn’t perfect.

This website and database argue that in many jurisdictions (not all), community members who are impacted by pretrial decision-making often have little clarity in how risk assessment tools impact them.

See below to contact us to provide updates or changes to the data we’ve provided here. 

Check out our full methodology and purpose and caveats to learn more about how we got our data.