Estimating the Impact of the Guidelines

Abstract

It is critical that a jurisdiction have the opportunity to anticipate a guidelines system well in advance of actual implementation. The criminal justice system should assess the utility and consider the resource implications of guidelines without having already committed to implementation on faith or, as one Boston judge aptly phrased it, by “buying a pig in a poke.” How well will the innovation achieve the goals the court leadership had in mind in its design? Will fnore or less confinement result? Will new forms of supervision be required for particular categories of defendants? Even if the analysis of impact suffers from a number of limitations, these can be made explicit and can form part of the discussion of the resources implications attendant on implementation. Thus this stage of the guidelines process gives the judiciaries an opportunity to reconsider the substance of the guidelines they have designed and the desirability of their likely impact. Estimates of the likely effect of the pretrial release guidelines can result in encouraging the redesign of guidelines in advance of implementation, thus preventing a costly mistake, or can even lead the court leadership to abandon plans for implementation because of anticipated undesirable consequences.