Anyone heard of ODARA.

New Zealand Police are now using the ‘Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment’ ODARA for short, imported from Canada.

ODARO is a predictive assessment to determine the likelyhood of a person deemed to have assaulted their partner assaulting them again. The results rank a person on a scale of 0 – 13, 13 being most likely to assault their partner again.

From what I have read so far there is no indication of when the system is used or exactly how the assessment is made or whether it has been modified in anyway from the original Candaian model.

What does concern me is the suggestion that the assessment may be an automatic includion in a bail hearing. Why bother having a bail hearing before a judge if a man’s liberty is determined by a pimply faced kid ticking boxes which pre-determines that he is already guilty of the offence and might offend again. It fact why bother paying for a public defender when it is already a forgone conclusion according to this systematic assessment.

This could be an interesting discussion if we could find out a little more about it.