An Organizer’s Guide to Confronting Pretrial Risk Assessment Tools in Decarceration Campaigns

We are at a crossroads where campaigns to end money bail and pretrial incarceration must also contend with the broad and insidious introduction of risk assessment tools (RATs) as one of the “replacement” interventions the system wants to claim as “reform.” We created this guide for organizers contending with this tension -- how to engage with risk assessment tools in their work to end pretrial incarceration and mass supervision.

Instead of focusing on abolishing risk assessments as an endpoint, we propose that targeting risk assessments is a tactic within a larger campaign strategy to end pretrial incarceration and mass supervision with clear decarceral goals. This guide provides tools for opposing RATs, and an analysis that our opposition to them is one part of a larger organizing strategy to end pretrial incarceration and mass supervision.

Designed by OORI Studio.