Assessing the Impact of Pre-Adjudication Assessment Approaches on Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Oregon, 2014-2018 (ICPSR 37595)

Version Date: Nov 10, 2022

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Principal Investigator(s):
Brian C. Renauer, Portland State University

https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37595.v1

Version V1

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Summary

This study examines two counties in Oregon (Multnomah and Yamhill) that have utilized a pre-adjudication risk assessment (PAA) to inform criminal case negotiation since 2014. This study seeks to answer these core questions:

  • has the introduction of a PAA into the court decision-making process impacted racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing outcomes over time in each county;
  • does one PAA process appear to produce more promising results in impacting racial/ethnic disparities;
  • using interviews and visual observations, how does the PAA influence case discussion and negotiation, decision-making, and workgroup norms and culture;
  • does validation of the PAA tool yield significant mean score differences across racial groups and/or predictive biases?

A number of jurisdictions have turned to pre-adjudication risk assessments (PAA) as a tool to potentially lower or stabilize incarceration rates by identifying the best suitable cases for community-based supervision. Questions have been raised about using risk assessment tools to help with the negotiation of sentencing outcomes in the pre-adjudication stages of criminal cases, particularly the potential for exacerbating disparate racial/ethnic sentencing outcomes.

Citation

Renauer, Brian C. Assessing the Impact of Pre-Adjudication Assessment Approaches on Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Oregon, 2014-2018. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2022-11-10. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR37595.v1

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Funding

United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. National Institute of Justice (2017-IJ-CX-0116)

Subject Terms

Smallest Geographic Unit

County

Restrictions

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reason for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Distributor(s)

Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research
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Time Period(s)

2005 -- 2018

Date of Collection

2018-01-01 -- 2019-12-31
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Study Purpose

To understand how pre-adjudication risk assessments are being applied in actual courtroom decision-making and if it has impacted racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing outcomes in two Oregon counties.

Study Design

Propensity score modeling was used for analysis.

Time Method

Cross-sectional

Universe

All pre-adjudication assessment (PAA) eligible cases between Feb 2014 to June 2018 in the study locations. Historical cases between July 2012-June 2013 that would have been PAA eligible prior to program implementation.

Unit(s) of Observation

Individual

Data Source

Data for Yamhill County came from three sources: the Yamhill Department of Community Justice, Yamhill Circuit Court data from the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, and Oregon Department of Corrections data from the Criminal Justice Commission.

Data for Multnomah County came from four sources: the Multnomah County District Attorneys' office, the Multnomah Circuit Court, the Multnomah Department of Community Justice, and the Multnomah County Jail.

Data Type(s)

Mode of Data Collection

Description of Variables

Defendant demographics, repeat offender status, pretrial detention status, criminal history, length of prison sentence, future felony risk score, sentencing grid scores, offense seriousness scores.

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Original Release Date

2022-11-10

Version History

2022-11-10 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

  • Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
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Weight

Propensity Score Weighting = Two primary approaches were relied on to conduct this analysis - marginal means weighting through stratification (MMW-S) for balance across racial/ethnic groups, and the inverse probability of the treatment weight (IPTW) for balance across the pre-adjustment risk assessment (PAA) conditions; both techniques were used to identify the average treatment effect for the treated.

For the MMW-S, weights are calculated using a multinomial logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of being in a different racial/ethnic group based on the observed covariates. The subsequent weighted analyses provide a counterfactual estimate as to the likelihood of receiving prison if the individual was a member of a different racial/ethnic group. Similarly, the IPTW technique calculates a weight for each control case (i.e., non-PAA) as a function of the propensity score that emphasizes cases that are most similar to the treatment (PAA).

There are no weight variables in the data itself.

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Notes

  • The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

  • One or more files in this data collection have special restrictions. Restricted data files are not available for direct download from the website; click on the Restricted Data button to learn more.