Building Knowledge and Support
Improving pretrial justice is a long-term effort. Success depends on many people in the agencies and organizations across your pretrial system. Explaining your pretrial justice goals and the research-based changes your jurisdiction will implement helps build support and buy-in among stakeholders and staff.
This is especially true when implementing a pretrial assessment like the Public Safety Assessment (PSA). The use of pretrial assessments has grown in recent years. Yet, many people do not understand the differences among the available assessments, and some might be skeptical or critical about their use.
A Local Perspective
Resources to Support Education
Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) makes available a number of training resources to help you educate and explain your pretrial improvements. The training covers pretrial legal principles, how the PSA fits into broader pretrial advancement, what the research tells us about what works to improve pretrial success, and the PSA factors and scoring rules.
Use the Guide to Stakeholder Education and its related resources to educate system and community stakeholders about your pretrial improvements. The resources include a presentation and a script for presenters.
The Guide to Assessor Training and its related resources should be used to train staff that will be conducting and scoring the PSA. The resources include a training presentation, a detailed lesson plan, handouts, and practice scoring exercises.
You’re encouraged to tailor the presentations for your jurisdiction.
How the PSA Works
Tools for Staff and Stakeholder Education
Stakeholder Education Lesson Plan (PDF) (download)
Stakeholder Education Presentation (PPT) (download)
Assessor Training Lesson Plan (PDF) (download)
Assessor Training Presentation (PPT) (download)
Ask the APPR Community
Have a question about the PSA? Ask the APPR Community. Connect with peers, find answers, and share experiences with an online community of pretrial practitioners. Many members of the community have direct experience implementing and using the PSA.
