Dates: 1/1/2024-12/31/2027 

Funder: National Institute of Justice (NIJ)/W.E.B. Du Bois Program of Research on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Justice System

Project Team: Spencer G. Lawson (PI), PhD, Gina M. Vincent (Co-I), PhD, and Namita Railkar, MPH

Description: The Law & Psychiatry Program was awarded a National Institute of Justice grant through the W.E.B. Du Bois Program of Research on Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Justice System. The project will focus on building a scalable method for achieving racial and ethnic equity in objective prison classification, which investigators intend to disseminate to correctional agencies nationally via a collaboration with the National Institute of Corrections.

The goals of this four-year project are to collaborate with the Massachusetts Department of Correction to:

1. examine the magnitude and drivers of racial and ethnic disparities in their Objective Point Base Classification System
2. facilitate adjustments to their classification system to reduce observed tool bias and disparities
3. pilot the adjustments to evaluate their differential (or equitable) impact on custody level placements and access to programming, both of which impact the length of incarceration
4. design a generalizable Building Equitable Objective Prison Classification Toolkit to guide correctional agencies nationally to build or improve their existing prison classification systems with an equity lens, while still preserving public safety and institutional security