Risk Aversion in the Bail Setting: An Examination of the Predictive Validity of an Ontario Bail Supervision Program’s Risk Assessment Tool

Abstract

In Canada, bail supervision programs were developed, in partnership with community-based organizations, to promote bail compliance and provide supervision to accused persons who would otherwise have been detained in remand custody. While many of these programs use traditional risk assessment tools to guide supervision, limited research has been conducted on their effectiveness in the bail supervision context. Adopting a quantitative as well as qualitative methodology, this study uses a representative sample of 100 supervision clients from one Ontario bail program to examine the validity of its risk tool – Service Planning Instrument™ (SPIn) Pre-Screen – as well as demographic and criminal justice factors, in predicting bail supervision outcomes. Analyses suggest that SPIn lacks predictive validity in the bail supervision setting. These findings are discussed within the broader context of net widening, as well as the greater bail/remand crisis and the culture of risk aversion that pervades the Canadian criminal justice system.