Validated Risk Assessment Tools Are Fairer and Safer than Money Bail And Can Protect Against Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Criminal Justice System
The current system of using money bail to determine who is released and who is detained before a criminal trial has been well documented to be racially and economically biased (see Racial Disparity and Money Bail, p. 2). The commonsense alternative—systems that incorporate validated pretrial risk assessment tools as the foundation of pretrial decision making—can substantially reduce the disparate impact that people of color experience during this critical stage of the criminal justice process. However, since 2014, when then-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder cautioned against using risk assessment in criminal sentencing, questions about race and pretrial risk assessment have been a prominent discussion point.