Risk Assessments at Sentencing in Pennsylvania
In 2010, the Pennsylvania State Legislature mandated that the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing create a risk assessment tool to be used at sentencing. Since then, the Commission has worked to create a tool that meets this mandate and addresses public concerns about fairness, bias and the criminal justice system itself.
In this episode, Kate Vander Wiede and Collin T. Hayes talk to several experts - from the legislature (Representative Todd Stephens), the Commission (Executive Director Mark Bergstrom) and Heinz (Dr. Daniel Nagin and Dr. Mike Skirpan) - about the risks and benefits of using data in the criminal justice field, about how the risk assessment tool has changed since the commission started work on it, and about what's next for a tool that no one seems to love.