Description

A recording of Media Mobilizing Project and MediaJustice's joint webinar launching the latest #NoDigitalPrisons project: Mapping Pretrial InJustice, an online database on the use of pretrial risk assessment instruments. Check out the database: http://pretrialrisk.com/ Hundreds of thousands of our community members are held in cages before their trials - innocent until proven guilty. The majority of them are Black and Brown, poor, and impacted by the brutal history of racial and economic oppression in the United States. Many jurisdictions are working to reduce pretrial jail populations by using risk assessments, which are algorithmic decision-making tools that try to predict who will come back to court and who will get arrested again, if released. However, studies show that there are major racial biases embedded in these tools, and that courts and decision-makers don’t reliably use them to reduce pretrial incarceration or supervision in many communities nationwide. To support the growing nationwide demand to abolish pretrial detention, we know it will be imperative to understand how (or whether) pretrial risk assessment tools either support or create barriers to our vision of decarceration. This is why the Movement Alliance Project has built a community-driven database website analyzing the use of risk assessment instruments in over 1000 counties, using secondary source materials as well as interviews conducted by students and community organizers. Watch the webinar to learn more about how this website can be used as a resource in your fight to end pretrial detention.