ID H0118: CRIMINAL PROCEDURE – Adds to existing law to provide certain requirements and restrictions for pretrial risk assessment tools.

In one paragraph

Idaho's H 118 (2019) requires transparency for algorithmic pretrial risk assessment tools, which score factors to estimate a defendant's risk and recommend bail or release conditions. All such tools must be transparent: the documents, data, records and information used to build or validate them, and their ongoing usage and validation policies, are open to public inspection, auditing and testing. A criminal defendant whose case involved a tool may review all calculations and data behind their own risk score, and no builder or user may claim trade secret or other intellectual property protection to block that discovery. Effective July 1, 2019.

Plain-English summary, written with AI assistance. The official text controls.

What it means for business

Vendors of pretrial risk-scoring software used in Idaho courts cannot keep their models, data or validation work secret.

Key provisions

1. 1Idaho Code 19-1910(1): all pretrial risk assessment tools shall be transparent
2. 2Documents, data, records and information used to build or validate a tool, and its usage and validation policies, are open to public inspection, auditing and testing
3. 3A party to a criminal case in which a court considered, or an expert relied on, a tool may review all calculations and data used to compute the defendant's own risk score
4. 4No builder or user of a tool may assert trade secret or other intellectual property protections to quash discovery of these materials in a criminal or civil case
5. 519-1910(2): a pretrial risk assessment tool is a process that creates or scores factors to estimate failure-to-appear, new-crime or community risk to recommend bail or release conditions, individually or by grid or schedule

Latest legislative action

Mar 28, 2019. Signed by Governor on March 28, 2019; Session Law Chapter 258