Predicting Risk for Violence, Weapons, or Sex Offense among Supervised Offenders in the District of Columbia

• In Event: Applications of Analytics to Community Corrections in Washington, DC

Abstract

In response to its mission to enhance public safety, prevent crime and reduce recidivism, the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA) embarked on this project to develop the Triage Screener, a risk screening tool that assesses an offender’s risk for violence, weapons and sex offense at start of supervision. Currently, CSOSA uses the AutoScreener tool to assess risk and determine a supervision level but the process could take up to 35 days to complete. The Triage Screener aims to inform immediate, risk-anticipated custodial decisions. The tool uses prior arrest history and demographic characteristics such as age at start of supervision, sex, years of education, marital status race, and number of dependents to assess an offender’s risk of committing violence, weapons or sex crime within 180 days from start of supervision and assigns the offender a risk score. Risk scores are generated within seconds on day 1 of supervision without the need for an interview. The system also recommends a supervision level for the offender based on his or her risk score. Bearing in mind that no prediction tool is perfect, CSOSA determined, in advance, what error rate is acceptable to its mission to protect public safety and manageable caseload allocation. These cost differentials between getting a false negative screening result and a false positive result were built into the system. The tool, built using logistic regression predictive modeling, has over 70% accuracy.

Author

• Emmanuel Anum, Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency