Clinical Versus Actuarial Judgments in Criminal Justice Decisions: Should One Replace the Other?

Federal Probation, Sep 2006 by Gottfredson, Stephen D, Moriarty, Laura J

IN VIRTUALLY ALL decision-making situations that have been studied, actuarially developed devices outperform human judgments. This is true with respect to psychiatric judgments (see, for example, Meehl, 1965; Gough, 1962; Ennis and Litwack, 1974); graduate school admissions (e.g., Dawes, 1979; Dawes and Corrigan, 1974); prognostic judgments made by sociologists and psychiatrists relative to a parole-violation criterion (Glaser, 1955, 1962); parole board decisions (Gottfredson, 1961; Gottfredson and Beverly, 1962; Carroll, Wiener, Coates, Galegher, & Alibrio, 1982); mental health and correctional case worker judgments of offender risk (Holland, Holt, Levi, & Beckett, 1983), spousal assault (Hilton and Harris, 2005) and in other areas (Goldberg, 1970), including the analysis of credit risk (Somerville and Taffler, 1995). Indeed, a recent review and meta-analysis of 56 years' accumulation of research on the "clinical vs. statistical" prediction "problem" conducted as part of a Festschrift for Paul E. Meehl, a pioneer in the field, again confirms that statistical models outperform clinical decision-makers OEgisdottier, White, Spengler, Maugherman, Anderson, Cook, Nichols, Lampropoulos, Walker, Cohen and Rush, 2006).

The relative superiority of statistical to intuitive methods of prediction is due to many factors. For example, human decision-makers often do not use information reliably (e.g., Ennis and Litwack, 1974), they often do not attend to base rates (Meehl and Rosen, 1955), and this has been specifically illustrated in criminal justice decisionmaking (Carroll, 1977); they may inappropriately weight items of information that are predictive, or they may assign weight to items that in fact are not predictive; and they may be overly influenced by causal attributions (e.g., Carroll, 1978) or spurious correlations (Monahan, 1981). In fairness, it should be pointed out that there may be advantages to intuitive judgments as well. For example, human decision-makers can make use of information that cannot be made available to a statistical device (at least readily). Demeanor during an interview may be one such example. Other factors in favor of intuitive judgments are reviewed in Dawes (1975; Dawes, Faust, and Meehl, 1989).1

Given these facts, is there reason to still consider clinical judgments when determining risk-assessment within a justice system population? Indeed, with the 1998 publication of Violent Offenders: Appraising and Managing Risk (Quinsey, Harris, Rice and Cormier), we find an argument that we should not. "What we are advising is not the addition of actuarial methods to existing practice, but rather the complete replacement of existing practice with actuarial methods" (p. 171; see Litwack, 2001 for a strong rebuttal in the arena of the assessment of dangerousness). We argue that even though statistical prediction is superior to clinical judgment in almost all settings, this does not obviate the need for nor value of clinical judgment in a variety of arenas, including some criminal justice venues. We use the roles of probation officers and correctional treatment specialists to provide examples.

Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists

Among the largest group of criminal justice professionals is that working in corrections. And with the vast number of adults and juveniles on probation, parole or incarcerated, the workload of these individuals is quite high.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 90,600 probation officers and correctional treatment specialists nationally (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006), and in the federal system, there are approximately 5,000 officers throughout the United States and its territories (personal communication, Richard Gayler, May 31, 2006). The number of adults on probation in 2004 was about 4.1 million (Glaze and Palla, 2005), for an average caseload nationally of about 46. The top three states in terms of employment of probation officers and correctional treatment specialists are California (13,090), Texas (6,100) and Florida (5,760). When examining data from 2004 that reports the state's community corrections population, we find that Texas has the largest, with 428,773 adults under supervision, followed by California with 384,852, and Florida with 281,170 (Glaze and Palla, 2005). Using these figures, the average caseloads range from a high of 70 to a low of 29.

Qualifications for employment as a probation officer or correctional treatment specialist vary by state, but a Bachelor's degree in social work, criminal justice or some other related field typically is required (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2006). Some states require a more advanced degree-Master of Science or Master of Arts in a related field (psychology, sociology, criminology, etc.), often with an additional experiential requirement as well. Many states require that probation officers and correctional treatment specialists receive training, upon completion of which the candidate must pass a certification test. Typically, new officers work as trainees or for a probationary period before they become permanent employees.