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The Need for the CPAT-R 

After a person is arrested, a judge must decide the next steps prior to the trial 鈥攁llow a person to post bail, which would give them the chance to pay a fee and secure their freedom before their next court appearance or remain in custody to ensure they appear at their next court date. In Colorado, the law requires judges to use a risk assessment tool to inform bond decisions. The tool provides consistent criteria judges can use to help make those decisions. It鈥檚 intended to help balance the goals of lowering pretrial jailing while preventing high-risk individuals from being arrested again and not showing up for their next court date.  

Weld County Director of Justice Services Doug Erler says such a tool is essential in helping balance the interests of public safety with the individual rights of arrestees before the court, otherwise, irregular decision-making could occur.  

鈥淚mplicit bias would likely become concerning,鈥� Erler said. 鈥淪omeone could say, you look like a bad dude and that would be enough for a decision. There would also be longer pretrial jail detention, because, without a tool, judges may get skittish and keep defendants in longer just to be safe. Added to that, there would be increased costs to taxpayers and criminal justice systems, possible increased public safety concerns and constitutionality issues would emerge more.鈥� 

Before 2020, most counties were using a tool called the CPAT (Colorado Pretrial Assessment Tool), however, since it was created in 2012, Erler thought the tool could use some upgrades.  

鈥淭he CPAT was working well, but there were a few elements that were consistently being challenged,鈥� Erler said. 鈥淔or example, the tool asked arrestees if they have a working phone, and in today鈥檚 age most people do so that鈥檚 not a top risk factor.鈥� 

To analyze the data and develop an updated version, Erler turned to Criminology and Criminal Justice Associate Professors Kyle Ward, Ph.D., and Victoria Terranova, Ph.D. Terranova worked as a pretrial officer in Texas while earning her doctoral degree, so she had good perspective on how tricky bond decisions can be. 

鈥淣o one is the same. It鈥檚 a hard decision that judges and bonding officers have to make, and it鈥檚 a high-volume decision,鈥� Terranova said. 鈥淚n the correctional process at that stage, you鈥檙e seeing the largest amount of people, and you know the least about those people because they鈥檝e been in jail for maybe a day. So you鈥檙e making a lot of decisions on the fly.鈥� 

CPAT-R Success 

The goal of the CPAT-R is to help leaders feel confident when making objective and fair decisions about whether to release individuals accused of crimes. The researchers say this happened two-fold with the CPAT-R. Since implementation, more people have been scored as low risk, potentially making it easier for a judge to decide on bail/bond, and the process has lessened ethnicity, gender and race bias. 

鈥淲hen we say bias what we鈥檙e really talking about is if the tool works differently in its accuracy, better or worse, based solely on being a member of one of those subgroups, so totally outside of any legal factors,鈥� Terranova said. 鈥淏ut we also looked at residential status, which was the first time anybody had looked at that.鈥� 

Other questions related to violence and drug use were also altered to limit bias. 

鈥淚f there was a history of violence, that didn鈥檛 quite work when we ran the analysis. It didn鈥檛 end up being an item that needed to be there, both in its predictive ability, but also it might have led to some of the bias contributors,鈥� Ward said. 

According to Weld County, this is the most comprehensive bias assessment conducted of a pretrial risk assessment tool to date. 

鈥淭he goal with all pretrial decision making is to ensure that it鈥檚 fair and it doesn鈥檛 compromise community safety,鈥� Terranova said. 鈥淲hat we鈥檙e learning more about pretrial detention every day is that being detained in jail can have detrimental effects while you鈥檙e going to court. So, minimizing that without increasing any risk to public safety is good for all.鈥� 

According to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, arrestees 48 hours can lose their employment, housing and custody of their children. Studies have also shown that being jailed directly increases an individual's likelihood of being convicted, and once convicted, a higher chance of a harsher sentence.  

How the CPAT-R was Created 

Generating the new risk assessment tool took two years of Terranova and Ward conducting thorough analysis in a three-phase approach. 

鈥淭he first phase was looking at the current version of the CPAT, which was an empirically based tool but not so much of a validated tool,鈥� Ward said.  

To better understand how the tool was being used, Ward and Terranova sorted through 3,386 cases from 2015 and 2016 and sent an online survey to 382 criminal justice stakeholders including pretrial executives, judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors, to verify the accuracy and effectiveness of the CPAT. 

鈥淲e wanted to see the outcomes of some of the people who were arrested,鈥� Ward said. 鈥淒id they FTA (fail to appear in court)? Then we followed up with them to find out what happened in the cases and why.鈥� 

During phase two of the project, Ward and Terranova went on the road to observe pretrial services agencies in person and conduct focus groups with private and public attorneys, prosecutors and public defenders. Finally, phase three began construction of the alternate tool based on the information gathered in the previous phases. 

鈥淲e included all the survey questions that were in the CPAT originally and added additional types of information focusing on community stability. We included factors on employment, where they lived and for how long, and court and criminal history, if there is a history of not showing up to court or if this is their first arrest, things of that nature,鈥� Terranova said.  

Terranova says they took a list of 90 questions and selected the most predictive ones using machine learning variable selection techniques and ended up with 11 risk factor questions that make up the CPAT-R. 

The CPAT-R was then piloted in 2019 in seven Colorado counties starting with Weld County. During the multiple-year analysis of the tool, Terranova and Ward had the counties use both the CPAT and CPAT-R in their assessments, so they could compare the results. Overall, the new tool worked and validated higher than any other being used throughout the country, sparking most counties in Colorado to use it.  

Seeing that success and now receiving recognition for it, Ward and Terranova said shows they helped make something meaningful.  

鈥淎s researchers, we have been very fortunate to have such a successful collaboration with all the agencies we worked with, and it really was a kind of all-hands-on-deck effort of listening to the needs of these different agencies and then acting on them. I think that鈥檚 the strength of the study,鈥� Terranova said. 鈥淏esides that, it鈥檚 been really cool to hear how the tool is working and hopefully making the process better and more accurate.鈥� 

Though the CPAT-R is updated and working successfully now, Ward says, there is a chance they may have to start this process all over again in the coming years.  

鈥淭hings change, policies change and risk assessment tools should be looked at every five to 10 years to make sure the data still holds up,鈥� said Ward. 鈥淪o, maybe it will be us, or maybe somebody else will take it on, but we鈥檙e ready, we know what we鈥檙e doing.鈥� 

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Several agencies provided funding for the research project. The Colorado Governor鈥檚 Office of State Planning and Budgeting supported financing of $125,429, and the University of Northern Colorado provided internal funding of $22,500.