OBJECTIVE Some scholars have criticized pretrial assessments for perpetuating racial bias in the criminal legal system by offering biased predictions of future legal system outcomes. Although these critiques have some empirical support, the scholarship has yet to examine the predictive validity and differential prediction of pretrial assessments across individuals by their age. Following the guidance of the life-course literature, the present study serves as the first age-graded evaluation of the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) focused on assessing whether the predictive validity and scoring predictions of the tool vary across the lifespan. HYPOTHESES We expected that the predictive validity of the PSA scores would vary across the lifespan, such that the PSA underpredicts for younger individuals and overpredicts for older individuals. METHOD The present study relied on pretrial information collected from 31,527 individuals during the Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research project. Logistic regression models were estimated to evaluate the differential prediction of the PSA for individuals ranging from 18 to 68 years of age. The results of bivariate models were used to produce area under the curve estimates at each year of age. RESULTS The results of the present study provided some evidence that the PSA differentially predicted pretrial outcomes for individuals from 18 to 68 years of age. Specifically, the predictive validity of the New Criminal Arrest and the New Violent Criminal Arrest scales appears to improve as individuals become older, suggesting that these instruments are better able to predict pretrial outcomes for older individuals relative to younger individuals. CONCLUSION The results suggest that the PSA is a valid predictor of pretrial outcomes and that the predictive validity of some PSA scores is impacted by age. These findings suggest that the age of the defendant should be accounted for when interpreting the new criminal arrest and new violent criminal arrest scores. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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随着个人年龄的增长，司法参与预测：公共安全评估的年龄分级评估。


目的 一些学者批评审前评估通过对未来法律制度结果提供有偏见的预测，从而使刑事法律制度中的种族偏见长期存在。尽管这些批评有一些实证支持，但学术界尚未检验不同年龄个体的审前评估的预测有效性和差异预测。在生命历程文献的指导下，本研究作为公共安全评估（PSA）的首次年龄分级评估，重点评估该工具的预测有效性和评分预测在整个生命周期中是否有所不同。假设 我们预计 PSA 分数的预测有效性会随着生命周期的变化而变化，因此 PSA 对年轻人的预测偏低，而对老年人的预测偏高。方法 本研究依赖于推进审前政策和研究项目期间从 31,527 名个人收集的审前信息。逻辑回归模型用于评估 18 至 68 岁个体 PSA 的差异预测。双变量模型的结果用于生成每年年龄的曲线下面积估计值。结果 本研究的结果提供了一些证据，表明 PSA 对 18 岁至 68 岁个体的审前结果的预测存在差异。具体来说，新刑事逮捕和新暴力刑事逮捕量表的预测有效性似乎随着个体年龄的增长而提高，这表明这些工具能够更好地预测老年个体相对于年轻人的审前结果。 结论 结果表明 PSA 是审前结果的有效预测因子，并且某些 PSA 评分的预测有效性受到年龄的影响。这些发现表明，在解释新的刑事逮捕和新的暴力刑事逮捕分数时，应考虑被告的年龄。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。