Monthly Archives: July 2016

(Un)Fairness of Risk Scores in Criminal Sentencing

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In a ruling today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court sanctioned the use of COMPAS risk assessment scores about a defendant’s potential recidivism in sentencing, so long as judges receive written warnings about the value of such scores and don’t rely on them exclusively. In that case, Eric Loomis challenged the trial court’s use of COMPAS scores in sentencing on due process grounds. Defendant’s argument boiled down to this: it was unfair to rely on a score whose accuracy cannot be assessed, interrogated, and challenged. Loomis and his attorneys certainly had notice about the score, but how the private company Northpointe came up with it was a mystery. The scoring system is a trade-secret protected black box, as my colleague Frank Pasquale would say.

from Forbes – Tech http://ift.tt/29F2H65
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