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NEWS JULY 20, 2020 ¦ 15

pretrial Public Safety Assessment (PSA), require in- uses the Ohio Risk Assessment System (ORAS) for
terviews with a defendant or convicted offender. pretrial hearings, and probation and parole services.
But at least one tool—the Correctional Offender To be sure, many jurisdictions use multiple crimi-
Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions nal databases to collect and verify data for their
(COMPAS)—has built-in “controls” that flag in- assessment tools. Robert Reburn, public informa-
stances where an interviewee is potentially being tion officer at Tennessee Department of Correction,
untruthful. “There are two built-in schemes in COM- notes that for the department’s Static Risk and
PAS to aid in detecting reliability issues,” notes Chris Offender Needs Guide—Revised (STRONG-R)
Kamin, interim general manager at Equivant, creator instrument, the state uses the “National Crime In-
of the tool. “First, there are several [questions] that formation Center (NCIC) to check arrest records,
are flagged if responded to in a certain way. A hy- as well as conviction records from the counties/dis-
pothetical example might be someone responding, tricts the offenders have convictions in.”
‘Strongly agree’ to the statement ‘I can’t stand any Some states will ensure the integrity of their own
type of delicious food.’ … Second, there are many criminal and court databases by deploying certain
item pairs whose responses should be consistent.” IT controls. Maine Pretrial Services executive direc-
Still, jurisdictions rely on more than just their tor Elizabeth Simoni notes the state implemented a
tools to uncover inaccuracies. Most, even with those three-tier access management system for its criminal
with COMPAS, check interviewees’ answers against records. Maine Pretrial Services, which enters data
police, correctional and court records, with some into the state’s Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment In-
undertaking more comprehensive investigations. strument (VPRAI), has midtier access, meaning it
Javed Syed, director of Dallas County Commu- can see, but not edit, criminal records.
nity Supervision and Corrections, says that where For its PSA deployment, Utah’s Administrative Of-
possible and applicable, his department will check fice of the Court (AOC) went a step further—it took
“official records, police reports, prior probation (most) manual data entry out of the equation. Geoff
notes, incarceration notes, therapy/education class Fattah, the state AOC’s communications director,
progress notes, clinical assessments and recom- explains that defendants in Utah’s court systems are
mendations [and contact] collateral sources such as assigned a unique state identification number by law
family, neighbors employers and the victims.” Texas
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