Restorative Action Alliance
Launches Campaign Towards a Fair Process

In 2025, the Restorative Action Alliance (RAA) launched a campaign to urge the New York State Legislature to eliminate and replace the state’s use of the current Risk Assessment Instrument (RAI), a tool adopted in 1996 to assess risk levels among people who had been convicted of sex offenses. 

The use of conviction registries is counterproductive, costly and only serves to perpetuate cycles of harm. Absent the political will to end the use of registries, The New York Legislature must, at the bare minimum, replace the RAI with fully validated risk assessment tools that are periodically reviewed and remove arbitrary factors, unrelated to risk of reoffense, from the current statute.

RAA is championing this campaign because the RAI being used in New York has never been properly validated and has been shown to be an unreliable and inaccurate method for predicting recidivism. Despite its profound consequences for housing, employment, community access, and due process, the RAI continues to be used without a sound scientific foundation, undermining both community wholeness and fundamental principles of fairness and justice. 

Background: The RAI was first adopted by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services in 1996 without input from independent criminal justice professionals, researchers, mental health providers or forensic experts. At the time of its implementation, there was no transparent review process, no peer-reviewed validation studies, and no meaningful engagement with the practitioners who work daily with risk assessment tools. Over the years, this lack of professional oversight has drawn increasing criticism: numerous advocacy organizations, legal scholars, treatment providers, and currently serving New York State judges have publicly questioned the tool’s scientific foundation and fairness, with many calling for its suspension or outright elimination due to its unreliability and the harmful consequences it has had on individuals and communities.

Modernized, evidence-based practices and a fair process — paired with strong prevention, survivor services, and reentry support — are essential to building strong communities and lives that are incompatible with sexual violence. Radically destabilizing people has never and will not achieve safer communities.

RAA’s Legislative Requests

• Eliminate the current Risk Assessment Instrument (RAI)
• Require adoption of validated, evidence-based assessment tools, including:
  • Tools validated using New York data
  • Distinct tools appropriate for different populations
  • An individualized and transparent approach
• Mandate periodic review and revalidation (at least every five years).
• Remove automatic overrides and other non-empirical scoring mechanisms
• Strike language requiring SORB to consider specific factors (those currently listed in statute are not correlated with risk of re-offense)
• Use person-first language in statute. (please see person-first language information  here and here)
• Engage researchers, survivors, directly impacted individuals, and practitioners in drafting reforms.
• Center racial and LGBTQIA equity in modernization efforts. The racial disparities report from the New York Civil Liberties Union can be found here.

As so many professionals have attested, the RAI is a blunt, unvalidated instrument that is not keeping communities safe. It is actually causing unnecessary harm to thousands of individuals who are required to undergo the process; along with their supporters, families and entire communities.

Read the RAA Campaign Legislative Summary Here

How You Can Help!

1. Become a Campaign Partner (Individual or Organizational) Letter in Support of RAA Campaign Towards A Fair Process for Risk Assessment

2. Develop & Share Your Story - To help everybody develop a powerful personal message for effective advocacy and communication, Restorative Action Alliance has offered a free storytelling workshop/webinar. Find the recording link below.
Stories from people required to register, treatment providers, legal professionals, social workers, reentry service providers, healthcare workers, survivors, restorative practitioners, public employees and concerned community members are needed.

3. Join our New York - Volunteer Advocacy Team - Step into purpose and the power of collective action for change. Join RAA on a monthly basis, the first Monday of each month at 6 PM for our New York Legislative Advocacy team meeting. Learn more here: https://www.restorativeactionalliance.org/new_york_advocacy