Advancing the Prediction of Prison Misconduct: Revalidating the Minnesota Severe and Frequent Estimate for Discipline (MnSafeD)

In June 2024, the Minnesota Department of Corrections implemented the Minnesota Severe and Frequent Estimate for Discipline (MnSafeD), a fully-automated, gender-specific classification assessment that was designed to predict prison misconduct. Customized to Minnesota’s prison population, the MnSafeD was created to identify the relatively small group of residents disproportionately responsible for much of the misconducts and violence that take place in prison. This study revalidated the MnSafeD on the first 8,631 residents who were scored on the instrument. The results showed the MnSafeD performed very well overall, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.84. The instrument’s predictive accuracy was better for the men and for the post-intake reassessments (0.86). The results revealed there were no predictive disparities by race/ethnicity.