The students decided to pursue a group project on the pretrial risk assessment software that judges in Utah use to help determine who will be released pending their trial and under what conditions. This software, called the Public Safety Assessment is used throughout many states. The class conducted extensive research using primary sources to investigate not only how the PSA works but why it was adopted in Utah.
The class divided into two groups to do primary research. One group dove into untangling the black box of the PSA, figuring out how all nine inputs interacted and were converted into two risk numbers. The other group spent hours reading committee notes, judicial documents, and other primary sources to construct a history of the adoption of the PSA. Click below to read about each branch of research.