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Commission expands university partnerships; launches CMU–Duquesne project on pretrial guidance and seeks improved resentencing reporting
Summary
Staff described educational outreach, research partnerships with Carnegie Mellon, Duquesne and Penn State, work on a CMU-led capstone project tied to proposed pretrial guidelines, an expanded postdoctoral program, upcoming research symposium and outreach to counties to improve resentencing reporting.
Commission staff reported at the meeting on a suite of research and education partnerships and outreach efforts.
Staff said the commission presented at the National Association of Sentencing Commissions conference in Madison, highlighted long‑standing educational MOUs with Duquesne and Penn State, and noted ongoing planning for the Villanova Sentencing Workshop. The education and outreach unit reported 135 role requests and about 850 practitioner questions between January and mid‑year, and said new e‑learning modules and seminar offerings on sentencing enhancements and guideline conformity were posted.
On research partnerships, staff described a new project that pairs Carnegie Mellon University data‑science students with Duquesne law students to produce a capstone analysis tied to proposed legislation (Representative Bonner’s bill referenced in the meeting) concerning the development of bail and pretrial release condition guidelines. Staff said Carnegie Mellon students will build predictive models while Duquesne students will provide substantive criminal procedure and legal context; the group will attend arraignments in Allegheny County as part of the project.
The commission also described continued postdoctoral collaborations with Penn State’s Criminal Justice Research Center, including a forthcoming presentation by a postdoctoral fellow on SR 196 at a New York symposium and a research‑to‑practice sentencing symposium the commission is co‑sponsoring in October.
Education staff reported an outreach effort to counties to improve resentencing reporting. They said staff had reached about 47 counties so far, provided raw data files to county probation offices for verification, and plan targeted follow‑up meetings with a representative set of counties through winter to develop best practices and improve the quality of resentencing submissions in time for the next annual verification process.
Ending: Staff said these partnerships help expand analytic capacity and practitioner outreach and that they will report progress on the CMU–Duquesne capstone and resentencing outreach at future meetings.
