Homework #2

                                                                      Risk and Needs Assessment

This week, you learned about risk and needs assessment in the criminal justice system, including its usefulness for decisions surrounding pretrial release, sentencing, probation, incarceration, and parole.

For this assignment, you need to locate one peer-reviewed journal article that addresses the use of risk and/or

needs assessment as it applies to one of the five above-listed facets of the criminal justice system. One example would be to find a journal article in which the authors studied how judges use RNA to help inform their sentencing

decisions. Once you’ve chosen an article, you need to write a 250-300 word summary of the article. Important

questions to answer in your summary are: what questions are the authors trying to answer (often found in the

introduction)? How did they go about finding the answers to these questions (methodology)? Did they answer

these questions and/or what else did they find out (results or findings)? What inferences and conclusions did the

authors draw from their findings (discussion and conclusion)? It is okay to use an article from outside the U.S., but all articles must be focused on criminal justice issues. We are not the only field of study to utilize risk assessment;

you are likely to come across medical and/or financial journals as well. Choose your article carefully and run it by

me if you are unsure. Include an APA-formatted citation for the article at the end of your summary.

A few things to note:

Don’t get bogged down with complicated numbers or terminology. Try to focus on what you understand
Please ensure that your article is from a peer-reviewed academic journal. Books and news articles are not acceptable.
“Summary” does not mean relying on direct quotes. Put it in your own words.
If you get stuck, try searching for a combination of terms, such as “risk assessment” + “pretrial release,” for
example.