Letter to Attorney General Barr RE: The use of the PATTERN risk assessment in prioritizing release in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Covid-19 04.3.20

View this letter as a PDF here.

April 3, 2020

Honorable William P. Barr
Attorney General
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530 

RE: The use of the PATTERN risk assessment in prioritizing release in response to the COVID-19 pandemic

Dear Attorney General Barr:

On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (The Leadership Conference), a coalition of more than 220 national organizations committed to promoting and protecting the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States, and the undersigned organizations and individuals, we write to express our grave concerns with your March 26, 2020 memo to the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“Bureau of Prisons” or “Bureau”), concerning the prioritization of home confinement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We ask that you rescind this memo in its entirety, and want to share particular concerns with the use of PATTERN — a risk assessment system built as a result of the First Step Act — as a factor in determining which currently incarcerated individuals may receive “priority treatment” in transfer and release decisions. Further, we ask that you immediately work to safely reduce the federal prison population using your broader existing authority, as well as the expanded authority afforded to you under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act.[1]

COVID-19 is spreading rapidly in cramped U.S. prisons and jails, where hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people face sickness and death. Already, hundreds of prisoners and staff have tested positive, and the first federal prisoner died from COVID-19 on March 22, 2020. This is a health emergency that urgently requires expedited releases from incarceration to enable social distancing and to protect people in prison and jail, correctional staff, and communities.

On March 26, 2020, you issued a memorandum directing the Bureau of Prisons to transfer some vulnerable people from prisons to home confinement in the name of minimizing their exposure to COVID-19.[2] We believe the restrictions you identify in this memo for home confinement eligibility are extremely troubling. In particular, you indicate the Bureau should rely upon an assessment tool, PATTERN, which numerous civil rights and legal organizations have previously warned is problematic and likely to perpetuate racial disparity in decision-making.[3] Moreover, your directive to the Bureau regarding PATTERN’s use for home confinement decisions during an emergency health crisis was not its intended use, and limits transfer prioritization to those assessed as “minimum risk.” The use of a tool like PATTERN to make life or death decisions is alarming and serves to justify leaving tens of thousands of people — mainly people of color — unprotected and at the mercy of a deadly pandemic.

Your memo instructs that only people who receive a “minimum” risk score from the PATTERN tool will receive “priority treatment.” According to data furnished by the Department of Justice in February, individuals classified as minimum risk are the smallest cohort of the federal prison population, compared to the groups identified as low, medium, or high risk. Also, based on an analysis of PATTERN using a sample of the federal prison population, and reported by the National Institutes of Justice, only 7 percent of Black men in the sample were classified as minimum, compared to 30 percent of White men.[4] This indicator alone should give the Department of Justice great pause in moving forward with the memo’s directive.

Experts have repeatedly criticized PATTERN, noting that the tool is scientifically unverified, and that the assumptions built into its design encode bias against Black people, Latino people, poor people, unhoused people, and people with mental illness.[5]

Given the unprecedented and immediate risk that COVID-19 poses to people in prison and prison workers, we categorically reject the use of PATTERN or any other recidivism risk assessment tool to justify leaving vulnerable people incarcerated.

Recommendations

  • The undersigned organizations and individuals recommend that the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons use their many authorities to decarcerate as many people as possible through all avenues of release, from all facilities under their control, as soon as possible. No release should be conditioned on electronic monitoring, nor should those afforded accelerated release be subject to heightened surveillance.
  • The undersigned organizations call on the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons to abandon the use of PATTERN and all other recidivism risk assessment tools for any form of release recommendation or decision-making, now and in the future.
  • PATTERN risk scores cannot inform assessment of medical risk and should not play any role in determining who receives access to adequate healthcare. As jail and prison protocols are developed to facilitate accelerated release and accommodate CDC safety guidelines for those incarcerated and facility personnel, punitive measures such as solitary confinement must not take the place of adequate health care. Moreover, institutional protocols must ensure that public health measures do not have collateral effects on the behavioral records—automated and otherwise—of those incarcerated.

Our Specific Concerns with PATTERN

  1. Predictions of recidivism are wholly inappropriate for informing medical release and public health in the context of a pandemic.
    1. Because PATTERN’s forecast of “general recidivism” is based on an incredibly broad definition of “re-offend”,[6] it is highly likely to produce assessments that are biased against Black people and people of color, and that disproportionately impact those experiencing homelessness, or living with mental health issues.
    2. The memo says that the risks of detention must be weighed against the risks of release; however, the “general recidivism” score produced by PATTERN does not help in making this assessment.
    3. When tools conflate the likelihood of arrest for any reason with risk to public safety, a large number of people will be labeled a threat without sufficient justification. Risk assessments that include minor offenses or technical violations in their definition of “risk” will inflate risk scores and incarceration rates and exacerbate racial inequalities. In the context of COVID-19 and this memo, this means a much higher risk of illness and of fatality.
  2. Limiting release to people with a “minimum” risk score will produce significant racial bias
    1. By conditioning release decisions on PATTERN risk scores, the Bureau of Prisons is poised to leave Black people and people of color disproportionately exposed to harm. Under this memorandum, only 7 percent of Black men currently incarcerated would receive “priority treatment,” whereas 30 percent of White men would.[7] This disparity is the byproduct of historical patterns in the ways different racial groups are treated differently by the criminal justice system.
    2. Black people and people of color are treated more harshly than similarly situated White people at each stage of the legal system, which results in serious distortions in the data upon which PATTERN relies.[8]​ ​Historical court and arrest data primarily reflect the past and present operations of the criminal justice system, recording who police chose to arrest, how judges choose to rule, and which people are granted longer or more lenient sentences. By relying on this data, PATTERN systematically overestimates the risk of people of color. There are no technical fixes to these problems that could make PATTERN and similar tools safe and fair to use.
    3. These biases are compounded by the fact that people of color have increased risk of illness and death from COVID-19 infection, due to structural health inequalities.
    4. The choice of PATTERN’s risk thresholds — in other words, the process of determining how many individuals are rated minimum or low risk by PATTERN — was not done with this pandemic in mind. Under this memo, an individual who is assessed as having an 89 percent chance of “success” upon release (meaning they would not be rearrested or have a technical violation within 3 years) would not be prioritized for potential release.[9]
  3. We are in an unprecedented situation, and historical arrest data are irrelevant to any assessment of public safety risk, especially during a pandemic.
    1. PATTERN’s validity rests on the assumption that criminal history data can serve as a reliable and neutral measure of underlying criminal activity, but such records cannot be relied upon for this purpose.
    2. Any predictions based on historical arrest data are ill-suited to make predictions about public safety risk in the current moment. Given the extraordinary circumstances under which we are currently living, historical crime data amount to “zombie” data — meaning the data used to build these models do not apply to our current conditions.
    3. Despite fears of increased criminal activity, local police are reporting that crime levels (including violent crime) have plummeted to some of the lowest levels seen in years.[10] Thus, there is strong reason to believe that the likelihood of arrest for any crime would be much lower than historical patterns indicate.
    4. Moreover, part of the promise of PATTERN was that it would give people the opportunity to reduce their risk scores by participating in programming. Yet, not enough time has passed for people to take advantage of this opportunity. As a result, it is unlikely anyone has had the chance to meaningfully alter their risk score, let alone be reassessed.[11]

In conclusion, our communities for years have warned decision-makers — including the Department of Justice — and the public about the risk of predictive technologies in high-stakes human decision-making systems. Tools like PATTERN are unfair, biased, and wrong on their own merits. But using them in a process to decide who gets the right to access social distance and freedom in the worst global pandemic in generations is particularly wrong. Therefore, we urge you to use your existing and expanded authority under the CARES Act to transfer as many people as possible into home confinement, without any of the limitations articulated in your memo, given that hundreds of thousands of lives are at stake. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Sakira Cook, Director, Justice Reform Program, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Organizations

  1. 334 East 92nd Street Tenant Association
  2. A Little Piece of Light
  3. ACLU
  4. AI NOW
  5. Alabama Justice Initiative
  6. All of Us or None, Bakersfield
  7. Alliance of Families for Justice
  8. Alternate Roots
  9. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee
  10. Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network
  11. Beauty After the Bars
  12. Believers Bail Out
  13. Bend the Arc
  14. Black and Pink Boston
  15. Block Builderz
  16. Buried Alive Project
  17. Carceral Tech Resistance Network
  18. California Coalition for Women Prisoners
  19. California Legal Research
  20. Campaign for Youth Justice
  21. Center for Disability Rights, Inc.
  22. Center for Justice Research – Texas Southern University
  23. Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP)
  24. Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law
  25. Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice
  26. Church of Scientology National Affairs Office
  27. CJI
  28. Coalition for Women Prisoners NYS
  29. College and Community Fellowship
  30. Community Justice Exchange
  31. Cornell University
  32. Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
  33. CRIFC
  34. Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School
  35. Criminal Justice Program, UCLA School of Law
  36. Critical Race Studies Program, UCLA School of Law
  37. CURE (Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants)
  38. Defender Impact Initiative
  39. Defending Rights & Dissent
  40. Dignity and Power Now
  41. Dream Deferred
  42. Dream Deferred Inc
  43. Drug Policy Alliance
  44. Entre Hermanos
  45. Equal Justice Under Law
  46. Equality California
  47. Essie Justice Group
  48. Fair and Just Prosecution
  49. Faith in Texas
  50. FAM Queen Team
  51. Families for Justice as Healing
  52. Fjah
  53. Florida Legal Services, Inc.
  54. Free Hearts
  55. Giving Others Dreams – G.O.D
  56. Harm Reduction Coalition
  57. Haverford College
  58. Health in Justice Action Lab, Northeastern University School of Law
  59. Human Rights Watch
  60. IBW 21st Century Police Accountability Task Force
  61. Innocence Project
  62. Jewish Council for Public Affairs
  63. Just Futures Law
  64. Justice For Housing
  65. Justice Strategies
  66. Justice Support Group
  67. JusticeLA
  68. Juvenile Law Center
  69. LatinoJustice PRLDEF
  70. Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law
  71. The Leadership Conference Education Fund
  72. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
  73. Legal Action Center
  74. Legal Services for Prisoners with Children
  75. Life After Release
  76. Life for Pot
  77. Massachusetts Against Solitary Confinement
  78. Massachusetts Bail Fund
  79. Matters of the Heart
  80. Media Alliance
  81. MediaJustice
  82. Media Mobilizing Project
  83. Mijente
  84. MomsRising
  85. NAACP
  86. NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.
  87. National Action Network
  88. National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
  89. National Association of Social Workers
  90. National Bar Association
  91. National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls
  92. National Council of Churches
  93. National Disability Rights Network
  94. National Immigration Law Center
  95. National Lawyers Guild
  96. NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
  97. New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc.
  98. New Direction Coaching & Consulting, LLC
  99. New Haven Women’s Resettlement Working Group
  100. NYU Law Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law
  101. OVEC-Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
  102. Participatory Defense Hubs
  103. People’s Paper Co-op
  104. Pillars of The Community Participatory Defense
  105. PolicyLink
  106. Presbyterian Church (USA) Office of Public Witness
  107. Pretrial Justice Institute
  108. Prison Policy Initiative
  109. Public Justice Center
  110. ReEntry Matters
  111. Reintegrated Voices
  112. Release Aging People in Prison/RAPP
  113. Reproductive Justice Inside
  114. Resilience OC
  115. Richmond Community Bail Fund
  116. Rise and Resist
  117. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights
  118. T.O.P. – Surveillance Technology Oversight Project
  119. Silent Cry Inc.
  120. Silver State Equality-Nevada
  121. Southeast Asia Resource Action Center
  122. State Vs Us Magazine
  123. T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights
  124. Texas Civil Rights Project
  125. The Bail Project
  126. The Black Sex Worker Collective
  127. The Daniel Initiative
  128. The Decarceration Collective
  129. The Greenlining Institute
  130. The Healing Project
  131. The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls
  132. The National Reentry Network for Returning Citizens
  133. The Tadini House
  134. The Talking Drum Incorporated
  135. The United Methodist Church – General Board of Church and Society
  136. Tucson Second Chance Community Bail Fund
  137. UCLA School of Law
  138. Upturn Toward Justice in Technology
  139. UnidosUS
  140. Union for Reform Judaism
  141. Union Theological Seminary
  142. United Methodist Women
  143. University of Chicago Law School
  144. Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs
  145. What’s Next Washington
  146. Witness to Mass Incarceration
  147. Women Against Mass Incarceration
  148. Women on the Rise
  149. Women Who Never Give Up, Inc
  150. Working Families Party
  151. WV Citizens for Clean Elections
  152. Young Women’s Freedom Center

Individuals

  1. Chelsea Barabas; Doctoral Candidate, MIT
  2. Ruha Benjamin, PhD; Associate Professor, Princeton University
  3. Meredith Broussard, PhD; Associate Professor, New York University
  4. Joy Buolamwini; Founder, Algorithmic Justice League
  5. Sasha Costanza-Chock, PhD; Associate Professor, MIT
  6. Kate Crawford, PhD; Distinguished Professor, Co-Founder, Co-Director, AI Now Institute, NYU
  7. Colin Doyle; Criminal Justice Policy Program, Harvard Law School
  8. Bernard E. Harcourt, PhD; Professor of Law & Political Science, Columbia University
  9. Stefan Helmreich, PhD; Professor & Elting E. Morison Chair, MIT
  10. Martha Minow; 300th Anniversary University Professor, Harvard University
  11. Cathy O’Neil, PhD; Author, Weapons of Math Destruction
  12. Rodrigo Ochigame; Doctoral Candidate, HASTS, MIT
  13. Heather Paxson, PhD; Professor of Anthropology, MIT
  14. Seth J. Prins, PhD MPH; Assistant Professor, Columbia University
  15. Vincent Southerland; Executive Director, Center on Race, Inequality, & the Law, NYU School of Law
  16. Meredith Whittaker, Co-Founder, AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor, NYU
  17. Jordi Weinstock; Lecturer on Law, Harvard Law School

 

[1] Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act available at  https://www.congress.gov/116/bills/s3548/BILLS-116s3548is.pdf

[2] Office of the Attorney General, “Prioritization of Home Confinement As Appropriate in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic,” Memorandum for Director of the Bureau of Prisons, March 26, 2020.

[3] The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Comment Letter to Department of Justice on PATTERN First Step Act, available at https://civilrights.org/resource/comment-letter-to-department-of-

justice-on-pattern-first-step-act/

[4] U.S. Department of Justice, The First Step Act of 2018: Risk and Needs Assessment System, available at https://nij.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh171/files/media/document/the-first-step-act-of-2018-risk-and-needs-assessment-system_1.pdf

[5] We outline our specific concerns below.

[6] U.S. Department of Justice, The First Step Act of 2018: Risk and Needs Assessment System – UPDATE, January 2020, at 12. (“A return to BOP custody or a re-arrest within three years of release from BOP custody, excluding all traffic offenses except driving under the influence (DUI) and driving while intoxicated (DWI).”) See also Brandon L. Garrett, Megan T. Stevenson, Open Risk Assessment, Behav Sci Law. 2020; 1–8.

[7] U.S. Department of Justice, The First Step Act of 2018: Risk and Needs Assessment System, p. 62, Table 8 available at https://nij.ojp.gov/sites/g/files/xyckuh171/files/media/document/the-first-step-act-of-2018-risk-and-needs-assessment-system_1.pdf.

[8] Decades of research have shown that, for the same conduct, African-American and Latino people are more likely to be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to harsher punishments than their white counterparts. For decades, communities of color have been arrested at higher rates than white communities, even for crimes that these racial groups engage in at comparable rates. Megan Stevenson & Sandra G. Mayson, The Scale of Misdemeanor Justice, 98 B.U. L. Rev. 731, 769-770 (2018). For example, African Americans are 83 percent more likely to be arrested for marijuana compared to whites at age 22 and 235% more likely to be arrested at age 27, in spite of similar marijuana usage rates across racial groups. Ojmarrh Mitchell & Michael S. Caudy, Examining Racial Disparities in Drug Arrests, Just. Q., Jan. 2013, at 22. Similarly, African-American drivers are three times as likely as whites to be searched during routine traffic stops, even though police officers generally have a lower “hit rate” for contraband when they search drivers of color. Ending Racial Profiling in America: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights of the Comm. on the Judiciary, 112th Cong. 8 (2012) (statement of David A. Harris). This leads to an overrepresentation of people of color in arrest data.

[9] Of particular concern is the requirement for a person to have a “minimum” risk score in order to be prioritized for release. In order to be assessed in the broad category of minimum risk, an individual must be assessed as “minimum” risk for both general and violent recidivism. This requirement will result in a large number of Black and Latino people being deprioritized for release, given historic racial disparities in arrest rates.

[10] See Simone Weichselbaum, Weihua Li, “As Coronavirus Surges, Crime Declines in Some Cities,” The Marshall Project, Mar. 27, 2020, available at https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/03/27/as-coronavirus-surges-crime-declines-in-some-cities. (“In fact, in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles and San Francisco, recent data show big drops in crime reports, week over week. The declines are even more significant when we compare this year with the same time periods in the three previous years.”)

[11] According to the Department of Justice, as of January 15, 2020, every person currently incarcerated received an “initial” PATTERN score and was “assigned to participate in evidence-based recidivism reduction programs.” Less than three months have passed since that date — too little time for those incarcerated to have been reassessed based on the completion of programming.