Opening a Critical Space: Data Analytics, Social Structures and Criminogenic Risk-Needs

• In Event: Challenging Actuarial Logics and Reconsidering Risk

Abstract

Actuarial tools claim to offer structured, quantitatively derived decision-making templates that rely on the use of social scientific evidence, particularly about recidivism and correctional interventions that reduce criminal propensities and enhance public safety. In many sectors of the criminal justice system there is a myopic emphasis on the predictive accuracy of actuarial risk versus clinical assessments of risk and unwavering actuarial faith in the capacity of actuarially derived tools to make neutral, unbiased risk determinations. This focus limits scholars’ ability to step back and question the central assumptions informing risk logics and the possibility of developing innovative policy derived from alternative ways of thinking about risk-needs as it relates to crime, security and intervention. It also stifles the theorization of risk in criminology. Importantly, in policy circles such claims have tended to silence wider debates about the appropriateness of generic risk assessments or even critical discussions about the complexities inherent to ‘recidivism,’ what many tools purport to measure. There have been few opportunities to consider how evolving empirical and theoretical literatures on how or if gendered, stratified and racially informed socio-structural analysis of crime as well as the insights of desistance research could shift or widen our conceptualization of risk.

Author

• Kelly Hannah-Moffat, University of Toronto