Utah officials recommend pairing lethality screening with ODARA risk tool to inform pretrial and treatment decisions

State public safety and court officials told the Judiciary Interim Committee that Utah's Lethality Assessment Protocol (LAP), implemented statewide in 2023, has improved victim referrals but is not designed to be used alone for pretrial or sentencing decisions about alleged offenders. They recommended pairing victim-focused screening with an actuarial, offender-focused instrument known as the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) where appropriate.

The background: Dr. Michelle Leslie, director of the domestic violence board (DVOT) under the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ), described DVOT's multi-stakeholder work to examine risk assessment and management for intimate partner violence. Tanner Jensen, director of the Statewide Information & Analysis Center (SIAC) with the Department of Public Safety, explained that law enforcement officers submit LAP assessments from scenes 24/7; SIAC analysts return background information to officers and to partners within minutes.

The LAP: Jensen said Utah has collected roughly 24,000 LAP assessments since July 2023 and receives about 1,000 per month. LAP's public-health focus aims to identify immediate danger and connect victims to services; Jensen reported that implementation coincided with an 86% increase in service requests from victims. He said LAP has high sensitivity (about 92—93%), so it picks up many high-danger situations, but it has lower specificity and can flag lower-risk cases as high danger.

ODARA and why it matters: Amy Hernandez of Utah Courts and Dr. Leslie outlined ODARA, an actuarial tool developed by Canadian researchers that predicts risk of a new domestic-violence assault over a multi-year horizon. Hernandez said ODARA's area-under-the-curve is about 0.77 in validation studies, which indicates statistically meaningful predictive ability; its scoring produces standardized risk categories and better inter-rater reliability than the LAP. Hernandez cautioned that ODARA was developed from datasets concentrated on male defendants in heterosexual relationships and is not validated for LGBTQIA relationship contexts.

How the tools differ: committee members and presenters emphasized that LAP is victim-focused and a public-health triage tool to connect people to services; ODARA is an offender-focused actuarial instrument intended to inform criminal-justice decisions such as pretrial detention or sentencing. Hernandez said ODARA has both static and dynamic items, and roughly seven items can change with treatment or other intervening events; ODARA scores can be updated if new conduct occurs or after treatment.

Implementation options and next steps: DVOT discussed three rollout options: (1) a law-enforcement rollout where officers administer or trigger ODARA in the field (higher training and cost burden); (2) a jail rollout where jails complete ODARA on detained defendants (significant cost and training needs); and (3) a SIAC rollout in which SIAC analysts score ODARA centrally (lowest training burden, better cost-benefit ratio). DVOT recommended stakeholder listening sessions, targeted training, and pilot implementations with data evaluation. Presenters warned that LAP should not be used alone for bail or sentencing because of its low specificity; ODARA could be used in a panel of instruments to inform balanced decisions.

Questions and concerns: legislators raised equal-protection and bias questions because ODARA's base research reflects mostly male defendants in heterosexual relationships and some jurisdictions have asked whether the tool is validated for indigenous populations; presenters said they examined studies that included indigenous samples and would provide source research and state comparisons on request. Members also asked whether other states use ODARA; presenters said more than 20 jurisdictions (and several other countries) use it, often as part of a panel that also assesses substance use and other dynamic risk factors.

No formal committee action was taken on the item; DVOT asked the committee for time to convene listening sessions and pilot options, and presenters asked that any use of ODARA include training, discovery protections and safety procedures for victims, and a plan for periodic validation and evaluation.