Reproducing the Logics of Risk: The Self-Reinforcing Nature of Assessment Within Parole

• In Event: Challenging Actuarial Logics and Reconsidering Risk

Abstract

The ubiquity of risk assessment and the proliferation of technocratic means (e.g., actuarial instruments, standardized procedures) for such assessment have been well documented in penal scholarship. This presentation explores how technologies of risk, once present, impact the field in which they are deployed. In particular, I argue that within the realm of parole, risk assessment is self-reinforcing; it represents a logic that helps to reproduce itself. Evaluations shape the understandings and practices of parole personnel in ways that contribute to the formation of a recursive circuit where individuals deemed as ‘high risk’ are perceived, supervised and responded to in ways that function to confirm—or even augment—their previously assumed risk. That is, risk assessment does not just measure risk, it produces, affirms and in some cases intensifies risk.

Author

• Robert Werth, Rice University