Maeve McMahon describes the current rush to risk prediction as part of the "McDonaldization of Corrections." She cites the increased focus on efficiency measures, the desire to quantify everything and render all behaviour predictable, and the desire to control as evidence of this trend. Another key and related challenge and critique of the work that is done by many corrections' researchers is that they tend to quote themselves and make bold claims regarding the success of risk assessment and actuarial prediction instruments on the basis of very small samples. Furthermore, as Loucks and Zamble identify in their research, existing risk assessment tools do not provide very accurate predictions of criminal recidivism or institutional/prison misconduct.

Moreover, proponents of current risk prediction and actuarial instruments fail to address the obvious question as to why those with the same profile in the community (i.e., those who are not criminalized) do not offend. The "research" is in fact devoid of explanations as to why individuals in the community who share the same characteristics as those who have been identified as risky in prison environments are not criminalized or otherwise labelled as a risk to community safety. Their research is limited to those who have been caught and imprisoned, without placing either the criminalized behaviour or individual within the context of relevant social, economic, political and other environmental influences and factors.

Whereas others have great difficulty challenging and explaining the causes of crime and the manner in which current problems may be addressed, many proponents of actuarial predictive risk assessments are incredibly sure of themselves and of the accuracy of their instruments and therefore their risk predictions. There is, however, a distinct of lack of transparency, clarity, and accountability amongst the corrections-based, corrections-funded, and corrections-promoted research, policy, and practice. Furthermore, actuarial claims actually obscure reality.

Youths are routinely pathologized within professional discourse, too often portrayed as unremorseful monsters in need of medical treatment. Explaining youth crime as an individual problem denies the structural and cultural barriers that youths say contribute to their actions. These professional stereotypes are reproduced and confirmed as "truths" through such powerful institutions as the media.

Christie Barron's interviews with young people, police, and other professionals within the juvenile justice system, clearly elucidate the extent to which racism and other forms of discrimination are rampant within the system and consequently determine who the police watch, who the prosectors try, who the judges jail and who the correctional authorities are refuse release. As Ms. Barron points out,

In addition to pathologizing and medicalizing youths, authorities create classifications that mystify the understanding of youth violence because the typologies are foreign to the youths' experience. For example, to comprehend the "violent youth," some of the authorities at Youth Court Services said that I should narrow my focus to one kind of violence. As was explained, there are two kinds of violence; the first is "instrumental aggression," whereby there is a purpose to the violence. It involves experiential learning and "often includes dysfunctional perceptions that justifies violence as a means to an end." This is the type of violence employed by gangs and psychopaths according to cognitive theorists.... By comparison, the youths made no reference to these types of violence. Most often youths' definition of violence had to do with simply hurting someone, but rarely, no matter how severe the assault, did they view themselves as inherently violent. Several youths made a clear distinction between themselves as people and the act of violence.... Hence the classification of the young respondents as "violent youth" by the authorities, and admittedly by me, is an inaccurate description of who they are. This categorization totalizes youth: violence becomes the sole characteristic of their being.