Do Structured Risk Assessments Reduce Bias Against Indigenous Youth? An Experimental Analysis - Study 1

Racial and ethnic disparities within Western criminal justice systems are unfortunately commonplace. In fact, the overrepresentation and overincarceration of Indigenous youth and adults has been recognized as a crisis by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Gladue (1999). Prior research has found that laypersons as well as youth justice professionals are susceptible to negative biases against racial/ethnic minority youth, however, limited research has focused on Indigenous youth. While some researchers have suggested that structured judgment approaches in risk assessment may be useful in reducing biases, others suggest that the use of such approaches may exacerbate disparities. Given gaps within the literature, the proposed research will use an experimental vignette design to examine racial biases in unstructured risk judgments (i.e., judgments based solely on subjective intuition) versus structured risk judgments (i.e., judgments based on a risk assessment tool) for Indigenous youth compared to White youth. Participants recruited through a Canadian university will be randomly assigned with identical vignettes that vary by race (Indigenous or White) and with either unstructured or structured risk judgment conditions. All components of the study are completed online through Qualtrics. The aim of the proposed research is to examine if Indigenous youth will be rated as higher risk than White youth, and whether these differences will be reduced through the use of a risk assessment tool. Results of the proposed research will shed light on the potential for risk assessment tools to reduce assessors’ racial bias in risk assessment for Indigenous youth.

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.