The Nebraska Center for Justice Research (NCJR) was contracted by the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention in King County, Washington to create a pretrial risk assessment. The goal of this project was to reduce the use over use of pretrial detention and the bail/bond system by accurately predicting the likelihood of pretrial defendants’ fail to appear (FTA) and new offenses prior to their court disposition. This report and the corresponding brief outline the creation and validation of the Personal Recognizance Interview & Needs Screen (PRINS) and the methods used to update the tool to create the PRINS 2.0. Findings demonstrated strong predictive findings in predicting FTA and a variety of recidivism types (i.e., violent, property, drug, and domestic violence). Further, findings were compared to scores of contemporary instruments – the Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument (VPRAI), Ohio Risk Assessment System-Pretrial Assessment Tool (ORAS-PAT), and the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) – with the PRINS tool demonstrating superior levels of predictive accuracy and reduced levels of gender and race/ethnicity bias. Finally, the PRINS was identified to more accurately provide release recommendations, demonstrated reduced levels of FTA and recidivism when compared to King County judicial discretion.
The PRINS Evaluation and Revalidation report can be found here.
Click here to access the PRINS Research Brief.