Actuarial Justice is the most contemporary trend in the field of criminal law, wherein the old theories of rehabilitation and retribution take a back seat and make way for complete risk management and effective control of targeted risk group so as to bring down the crime rate. The primary work of actuaries is to evaluate scientifically the future risks such as unemployment, illness, death, etc. Their prognoses can be said to be the backbone of the insurance and financial security industries. In these fields, actuarial techniques are used to produce insurance percentage rates needed to establish premiums to cover anticipated losses and expenses. In the criminal justice system, proponents of this approach attempt to evaluate risk and danger of offenders’ treatment programmes. Actuarial justice also fortifies strategies for prevention of crime. 

This is done not by trying to bring the criminals into the social mainstream or by trying to normalise their actions, but by controlling factors that trigger such offensive behaviour through modern techniques and management of a targeted group. As far as the old penology norms are concerned, individual is regarded as the unit of analysis and intention of the individual to commit an offence plays a crucial role. The sanctions so imposed are based on various theories of punishment as per the nature of the crime committed. These theories involved various aspects such as diagnosis of the criminal intent of the individual, the issues of moral sensibility, treatment of offenders and other transformative measures.

Actuarial justice has a prospective outlook. It is primarily concerned with estimating and preventing the occurrence of forthcoming behaviours rather than with sanctioning them or understanding and addressing their past causes. The focus of actuarial justice is mainly on sapping and regulating future behaviours of prospective criminals. This new norm is managerial and not transformative in nature. The moral or ethical description of individual stands replaced with actuarial language of probable calculations and statistical distributions applied upon individuals. This becomes possible by grouping individuals as per the degree of the risk that underlies. 

Basically this new norm shifts away from imposing individual responsibility and focuses on management of crimes in a statistical manner, by identifying and managing unruly groups. The ultimate aim of the new penal system is to bring the crime within tolerable limits rather than eliminating it altogether or bringing the offenders into the mainstream of the society.

Instances of actuarial justice in practice can be found in many parts of the criminal justice system. Tools such as target hardening, statistical profiling, opportunity minimization, and loss prevention are put in place. To minimize the occurrence of negative events, proponents of crime prevention and the police rely on risk classification. These risks are then prevented from entering into some form of social strata as happens in the selective incapacitation of high-risk offenders. In addition, crime prevention aims at modifying the context where aversive events might take place. Hence, the target of control shifts from the criminals to the prospective victims and their surroundings. Finally, another sign that crime prevention is steadily being influenced by actuarial justice is that when people are unable to avoid risk, strategies are put into place to systematically absorb it. For example, the idea of selling goods at a marginally inflated price so as to include the losses incurred as a result of shoplifting can be said to be inspired by this concept.

The new objectives also inevitably permeate through the courts into thinking about rights. The new penology replaces consideration of fault with predictions of dangerousness and safety management and, in so doing, modifies traditional individual-oriented doctrines of criminal procedure. This shift is illustrated in US. v. Salerno¹, which upheld the preventive detention provision in the Bail Reform Act of 1984. Writing the opinion for the Court, then Associate Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist reasoned that preventive detention does not trigger the same level of protection as other penal detentions because it is intended to manage risks rather than punish. While the distinction may have seemed disingenuous to some, it acknowledges the shift in objectives we have emphasized and redefines rights accordingly.

Actuarial justice as a correctional model encompasses all the characteristics such as the normalization of deviance and the focus on risk, management, and the future. Under these ideas, the practices of parole have changed substantially. While originally, readmitting someone to prison while he or she was on parole demonstrated the failure of the correctional system because it showed that the person had not been successfully treated during the incarceration. In the actuarial justice model it has become a sign that the system efficiently controls risks.

The criminal is neutralized before he or she commits further crime. Indirectly as it may seem, these measures not only aim at punishing offenders for past behaviours, but they mostly seek to contain future crime. Risk assessment and management as well as cost-effectiveness and prevention seem to prevail over the idea of retribution and transformation.  

Actuarial justice is a conceptual model of the criminal justice system that is preoccupied with managing future risks rather than transforming individual and eliminating deviance. Even if its origin can be traced to the late 18th century, the actuarial justice model developed in the 1980s under the impulse of the system thinking and the management logic as well as the utilitarian philosophy. Both the right-and left-wing politics participated in its development. The actuarial model is pervasive in every part of the criminal justice system from crime prevention to sentencing and corrections. In conclusion, while actuarial justice and the notion of risk suggest neutrality and objectivity, actuarial practices are marked by gender, culture, and subjectivity. Invested with an aura of science and rationality, actuarial practices hide the political processes behind the construction of crime, the identification of segments of the population as high-risk offenders, and the exclusion resulting from the so called necessary protection measures. Finally, actuarial justice isolates the criminal justice system from the social finalities that were once measures of its worth.

In establishing the probability of dangerousness, actuarial justice might be useful. However, there are two fundamental questions and one major danger to be addressed if actuarial justice is to be a major factor in dealing with crime. First, actuarial calculations that pertain to risk in insurance are based on the probability of unintentional and unplanned injuries, sicknesses, or accidents occurring. Actuarial calculations in the area of crime deal with intentional acts that result from multiple variables that influence the thinking and actions of individuals. As in insurance, the presence of intentional acts in actuarial calculations can increase premiums, i.e., increase penalties for the most prevalent crimes, regardless of severity. 

A second difficulty with actuarial justice is that predictive conclusions might be scientifically correct, but unacceptable in policy implementation; for example, actuarial justice may accurately indicate that members of certain minority groups have the highest probability of committing certain crimes; however, racial profiling or the concentration of policing resources on minority communities is not acceptable as a policy. 

A third flaw that can accompany the application of actuarial justice is that one factor linked to crime prevalence, such as age, may dominate policy. To cite an example, the fact that young or juvenile offenders are more prolific offenders than older offenders whose criminal careers are waning could lead to longer periods of incapacitation for young offenders without regard to other factors, such as the fact that young offenders are more amenable to treatment, or variations in factors that determine criminal career trajectories. Developing actuarial equations that take into account the multiple factors that determine individual behaviour is an elusive if not impossible endeavour. Consequently, the equations of actuarial justice tend to be more simplified and intended for application to broad groupings of offenders. The more groups can be narrowed, the fairer and more effective will be the criminal justice policies toward offenders.

The transition of the criminal justice system from individual centric to management of unruly groups using statistical techniques is an area to explore explicitly. There is a long way ahead in its in depth application in the Indian scenario.