NCJ Number
243794
Date Published
February 2013
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This document is the Colorado Pretrial Assessment Tool Administration, Scoring, and Reporting Manual, Version 1.
Abstract
This document from the Pretrial Justice Institute is Version 1 of the Colorado Pretrial Assessment Tool (CPAT) Administration, Scoring, and Reporting Manual. The CPAT was developed to improve the various pretrial assessment processes that currently exist in Colorado jurisdictions. The tool is consistent with Colorado State law in following the factors that must be considered when judges are making decisions on the type of bond and conditions of release for defendants. The tool however, goes one step further by providing guidance to judicial officers on how to weigh the factors when considering a defendant's degree of risk. The information in the manual is divided into three chapters. Chapter 2 describes the 12 items that must be scored when the CPAT is used to assess a defendant's level of risk. Information for the first eight items in the CPAT are obtained through face-to-face interviews while information for the last four items is obtained from online criminal justice databases. Chapter 3 of the manual provides guidance on reporting the defendant's CPAT scores, while Chapter 4 briefly discusses the need for future revisions to the tool. Tables