How Much Risk, and Risk of What? A Closer Look at Pretrial Rearrest and Risk Assessment

Many studies of pretrial rearrest aggregate charges of all severities together, from high-level felonies to petty misdemeanors. Using a dataset of over 15,000 felony defendants who were released pretrial between July 2017 and July 2021 in New Mexico, we disaggregated rearrest outcomes by offense type and severity and explored how these factors related to the risk scores generated by the Public Safety Assessment (PSA). We found that the rates of rearrest for serious crimes during pretrial release were lower than the overall rearrest rates suggest. In particular, across all PSA score categories, approximately one-third of rearrests involved misdemeanors or petty misdemeanors. Of the two-thirds of rearrests for felony charges, most were for fourth-degree offenses. Rearrest for first- or second-degree felonies was rare, occurring in less than 0.1% and 1% of cases, respectively, even among defendants whose initial charge was severe and who received high risk scores from the PSA.