Defendant(s)

Richard Montgomery Zane Duncan Gary Faulcon Tim Gobble Mae Beavers Roberta Kustoff Barrett Rich

Law(s)

State(s)

Tennessee

A proposed class action claims the Tennessee Board of Parole uses an “unreliable, unauthenticated” computer program to decide if inmates are eligible for parole and then prohibits them from effectively challenging these rulings.

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The 21-page lawsuit was filed by two inmates serving prison sentences in Tennessee who claim they were denied parole based on the “flawed” results of their “Strong-R” assessment, a computerized test that assesses offenders’ needs and scores the overall risk they will reoffend.

Although the plaintiffs allege that their Strong-R results—which placed them in the “high” and “moderate” risk categories—were “simply random” or based on false allegations, the Parole Board has barred all of their attempts to dispute these results, the filing contends.

One plaintiff, an inmate serving a 48-year sentence for several crimes, says that until he was transferred to a different prison in 2022, his annual Strong-R risk results would come back as either “low” or, in some cases, “moderate.” However, after taking the assessment post-transfer, the plaintiff's results inexplicably showed that he was “high” risk and likely to become violent, the suit contends.

Per the complaint, the detailed results of the man’s...

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