Pretrial Release: Risk Assessment Tools (SB 36)

Senate Bill 36 (SB 36) Annual Reporting

Under SB 36, the Judicial Council publishes an annual report that provides data on pretrial release outcomes and examines potential biases in state-funded pretrial programs that perform risk assessments. The reports include information on county pretrial programs, data by superior court in large and medium courts and otherwise aggregated by superior court size, and data by risk assessment tool.

SB 36 also requires each pretrial services agency that uses a pretrial risk assessment tool to validate that tool by July 1, 2021, and on a regular basis thereafter, but no less frequently than once every three years. Agencies must also make specified information regarding the tool, including validation studies, publicly available. The Judicial Council has provided validation studies for several risk assessment tools in use in the courts that participated in the Pretrial Pilot Program.

The Judicial Council also published a bias mitigation report on pretrial processing. First released in January 2023, this standalone report to the superior courts and the Legislature contains recommendations to mitigate bias and disparate effects in pretrial decision-making.

To learn more about SB 36 reports, bias mitigation reports, and validation reports, select a section below to expand and view the details.

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Access the SB 36 Aggregated Data Reports
Access the Risk Assessment Tool Validation Studies

The reports address the validation of four pretrial risk assessment tools: Ohio Risk Assessment System–Pretrial Assessment Tool (ORAS-PAT), Public Safety Assessment (PSA), Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument (VPRAI), and Virginia Pretrial Risk Assessment Instrument–Revised (VPRAI‑R). The Pretrial Pilot Program counties using each of these tools and included in the evaluation data set are referenced below. Counties marked with an asterisk (*) represent that the county switched to a different tool. Instances of these county names without an asterisk represent the tool that these counties switched to. 

Image of the SB36 tool validation table detailing which tools pretrial pilot courts are using