Evaluation of Pretrial Justice System Reforms That Use the Public Safety Assessment

On January 1, 2017, the State of New Jersey implemented Criminal Justice Reform (CJR), a sweeping set of changes to its pretrial justice system. With CJR, the state shifted from a system that relied heavily on monetary bail to a system based on defendants’ risks of failing to appear for court dates and of being charged with new crimes before their cases were resolved. These risks are assessed using the Public Safety Assessment (PSA), a pretrial risk-assessment tool developed by Arnold Ventures with a team of experts. The PSA uses nine factors from an individual’s criminal history to produce two risk scores: one representing the likelihood of a new crime being committed, and another representing the likelihood of a failure to appear for future court hearings. The PSA also notes whether there is an elevated risk of a violent crime. The PSA is used in conjunction with a New Jersey-specific decision-making framework (DMF) that uses an individual’s PSA risk score in combination with state statutes and statewide policies to produce a recommendation for release conditions