Risk Assessments Within The Criminal Justice System

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Recommended: The role of community corrections in the criminal justice system

Risk assessments are an essential component to the criminal justice system because without them jails and prisons could not perform their duties and would not be as efficient. Risk in principle is a fact, yet danger is an issue of perception, how much will society tolerate. People tolerate a lot of risks without noticing the dangers. Risk assessments let us know what is not easily noticed though they still have some blind spots where studies need to be done. The ways that community correction agencies use risk assessments, the elements that are risk assessed, and strengths and weaknesses of most risk assessments will be discussed.

Uses of risk assessments

There are various risk assessments that exist. For example, there are different ones for pre-sentencing, parole, and in-between that time with prison and jail time served for appropriate measures to be determined. These will help the offender get what is needed based on the severity of their needs. For instance, the specific treatments and/or programs for rehabilitation to occur the offender will need to notify the right authorities and the way to do that is filling out an assessment of risk.

The first issue to be tackled for an offender is a drug referral if needed since other interventions and programs will not have much effect if the offender will not retain them due to drug use. These treatment facilities communicate with the probation officers. They keep them informed on the offender’s progress and/or issues the offender has. The lower risk offenders are eligible for treatment programs. (Loftus, lecture)

There are more opportunities that apply to lower risk offenders, not just treatments and programs. Only lower risk offenders in jail have a chance to volunteer for...

... middle of paper ...

...ing education. The weaknesses that were touched upon were social groups, gender gap, and racial influences.

Works Cited

Gould A. Laurie, Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 6(3) (2010), P. 267–285, Perceptions of Risk, Need, and Supervision Difficulty in the Community Corrections Setting, University of Texas at Arlington, http://www.jstor.org/. Accessed: 9/10/11

Loftus Rebecca PH.D., Lecture on risk assessments, Fall 2011, Probation and Community Probations. Noted: 9/6/11 & 9/8/11

MILLS F. JEREMY AND KRONER G. DARYL, Criminal Behavior and Mental Health Vol. 16 (2006), P. 155–166, The effect of discordance among violence and general recidivism risk estimates on predictive accuracy, 1Bath Institution, Bath, Canada and Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; 2Pittsburgh Institution, Pittsburgh, Ontario, Canada, http://www.jstor.org/. Accessed: 9/10/11

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