There are multiple phases of case triage throughout most criminal investigations, which begin with the receipt of the call for service, continue throughout the preliminary and follow-up investigations, and conclude with the judicial process when there are sufficient grounds to seek a criminal prosecution. Individual police agency’s policies set the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for incident/case triage, including policies on call assignment priorities for patrol, preliminary investigation and documentation requirements, response options for specialized crime scene support personnel (e.g., detective; crime scene investigators; digital evidence specialist), investigative follow-up, laboratory support, and prosecution. Whenever and however case triage processes are utilized, the primary assessment goals are incident prioritization and optimized resource allocation.

The structured professional judgment (SPJ) approach to decision-making involves the inclusion of an actuarial tool or algorithm, such as a weighted screening scale or a “lethality assessment,” to inform the decision of the professional—but not to dictate that decision. Instead, the professional considers the outputs of the actuarial process and then adds considerations of any exceptional factors based on the full context of the issues at hand. While SPJ has been effectively utilized for many decades by mental health and correctional professionals to enhance the accuracy of risk assessments of potential future violence by individuals who are in some form of judicial or psychiatric confinement, more recent applications include risk assessment of domestic violence threat levels, criticality of missing persons incidents, and for “counter-insider threat” assessments.¹

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