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File Name | S22-Policy-NCFCA-64-NEG-Pattern.docx |
File Size | 55.54 KB |
Date added | April 4, 2022 |
Category | Policy (NCFCA) |
Author | Vance Trefethen |
Resolved: The United States Federal Government should significantly reform its policies regarding convicted prisoners under federal jurisdiction
Case Summary: The AFF plan reforms the “PATTERN” system it (Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs). It’s a computer program that evaluates recidivism risk among prisoners to determine which are eligible for “Earned Time Credits”. AFF argues that some prisoners are being treated too harshly because the scores the computer gives are falsely judging them to be higher recidivism risks than they really are. Plan adjusts the scores to allow more prisoners to be considered “low risk”. The threshold of what’s considered “low” or “medium” or “high” risk are completely arbitrary, there’s no right or wrong answer. And PATTERN was reformed recently, with a lot of improvements and changes. AFF’s own evidence says we should wait and study how released prisoners perform in order to know whether the score thresholds should be adjusted (to see if we’re accurately predicting what released prisoners do – whether, indeed, the ones we judge as “low” risk in fact do not often return to crime after release).