Can we avoid reductionism in risk reduction?
| Author | Adam Reich,Seth J Prins |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617707948 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617707948
Theoretical Criminology
2018, Vol. 22(2) 258 –278
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480617707948
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Can we avoid reductionism
in risk reduction?
Seth J Prins
Columbia University, USA
Adam Reich
Columbia University, USA
Abstract
Risk assessment and risk reduction have become increasingly central to criminal justice
policy and practice in the last 25 years. Yet there remains a lack of consensus both on the
theoretical and methodological foundations of risk and on its social and practical implications.
Some proponents see risk assessment and reduction as solutions to the inefficiencies and
injustices of contemporary mass incarceration. Some critics see actuarial risk as being partially
responsible for mass incarceration, and warn that recent iterations will only reinscribe existing
inequalities under a new guise of objectivity. Both perspectives contain elements of truth,
but each falls short because neither adequately specifies the different dimensions of risk that
condition its effects. Using two prominent frameworks as foils, this article excavates the
contested terrain of risk assessment and exposes a set of distinctions that can inform the
use—and prevent the abuse—of risk knowledge in criminal justice policy.
Keywords
Criminal justice, criminology, methodology, risk assessment, risk reduction
For at least the past 25 years, criminal justice theorists have observed the growing impor-
tance of risk assessment and risk reduction in criminal justice policy and practice. Yet there
remain conflicting perspectives on how “risk” should be understood and implemented in
Corresponding author:
Seth J Prins, Department of Sociomedical Sciences, Columbia University, 722 W 168th Street, 548,
New York, NY, 10032, USA.
Email: sjp2154@columbia.edu
707948TCR0010.1177/1362480617707948Theoretical CriminologyPrins and Reich
research-article2017
Article
Prins and Reich 259
the criminal justice field (Garland, 2003a; Hannah-Moffat, 2012). Among its proponents,
risk assessment seems to offer a solution to the inefficiencies and injustices of mass incar-
ceration (Sherman, 2007). Focused-deterrence and hot-spot policing strategies, for exam-
ple, promise to concentrate resources on the riskiest people and places while lessening the
negative impacts of aggressive policing overall (Braga and Weisburd, 2010; Kleiman,
2009). Allocating probation supervision and treatment resources according to criminogenic
risk profiles focuses attention on those most likely to benefit from it, while leaving alone
those whom supervision might harm (Andrews and Bonta, 2010; Lowenkamp et al., 2006).
Among its critics, however, risk profiling—through the idea of “selective incapacita-
tion” popularized in the 1980s—is central to understanding the rise of mass incarceration
and its detrimental effects (Feeley and Simon, 1992; Harcourt, 2007). Such scholars are
suspicious that contemporary extensions of risk assessment and risk reduction will likely
only reproduce, or may even exacerbate, the injustices of contemporary criminal justice
policy under a more “objective” guise; and will fail even on their own terms at reducing
crime (Harcourt, 2007).
There is of course a full spectrum of analysis, critique, and pragmatic positioning
between these two perspectives. Much has been written on the use and misuse of risk
assessment (e.g. Farabee et al., 2011; Hannah-Moffat, 2015; Hannah-Moffat et al., 2009;
Monahan and Skeem, 2014, 2016; Skeem, 2013; Taxman and Marlowe, 2006; Taxman
et al., 2006), and its social and political ramifications (e.g. Hannah-Moffat, 2004; Hannah-
Moffat and Maurutto, 2010; Harcourt, 2015; O’Malley, 2012; Skeem and Lowenkamp,
2016). This article is not an attempt to summarize or supplant that rich dialogue. Rather,
our aim is to excavate what we believe to be some of the buried conceptual roots of risk
assessment’s contested terrain.
There is also an exhaustive empirical literature comprising many dozens of meta-
analyses and systematic reviews that quantitatively evaluate the predictive validity and
utility of various risk assessment instruments, often with conflicting conclusions (for a
meta-review of these meta-analyses and systematic reviews see Singh and Fazel, 2010).
The present article is not an attempt to comprehensively summarize the technical and
empirical literatures. Rather, we draw on key insights from these literatures to illustrate
the conceptual and theoretical issues on which this article focuses.
Central to our argument is that criminological risk assessment as a way of knowing is
necessarily linked to practices based on this knowledge. Yet the ways in which this link
is made and understood (both by its proponents and opponents) is often oversimplified
(Hannah-Moffat, 2015; Hannah-Moffat et al., 2009), leading either to overconfidence or
to poorly articulated opposition. The goal of this article, then, is to clarify the different
dimensions of risk, and to articulate how “risk reduction” contains simultaneously the
possibility of progressive reform and the perils of deepening inequality and ineffective
intervention.
The stakes are not trivial, as the widespread acceptance and expansion of risk assess-
ment in criminal justice policy is outpacing the theory and evidence to support it
(Desmarais and Singh, 2013; Desmarais et al., 2016; Hannah-Moffat, 2012; Lowenkamp
and Whetzel, 2009). The use of risk assessment is expanding from recidivism prediction
to pre-trial processing, sentencing, and policing (Desmarais and Singh, 2013; Desmarais
et al., 2016; Gottfredson and Moriarty, 2006; Lowenkamp and Whetzel, 2009; Storey
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