Slide 35
Slide 35 text
by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica
Ma 23, 2016
ON A PRING AFTRNOON IN 2014, riha orden wa running late to pick up her god-iter from
chool when he potted an unlocked kid’ lue Hu� iccle and a ilver Razor cooter. orden and a
friend graed the ike and cooter and tried to ride them down the treet in the Fort Lauderdale uur
of Coral pring.
Jut a the 18-ear-old girl were realizing the were too ig for the tin conveance — which elonged
to a 6-ear-old o — a woman came running after them aing, “That’ m kid’ tu�.” orden and her
friend immediatel dropped the ike and cooter and walked awa.
ut it wa too late — a neighor who witneed the heit had alread called the police. orden and her
friend were arreted and charged with urglar and pett theft for the item, which were valued at a total
of $80.
Compare their crime with a imilar one: The previou ummer, 41-ear-old Vernon Prater wa picked up
for hoplifting $86.35 worth of tool from a near Home Depot tore.
Prater wa the more eaoned criminal. He had alread een convicted of armed roer and attempted
armed robbery, for which he served �ve years in prison, in addition to another armed robbery charge.
orden had a record, too, ut it wa for midemeanor committed when he wa a juvenile.
Yet omething odd happened when orden and Prater were ooked into jail: A computer program pat
out a core predicting the likelihood of each committing a future crime. orden — who i lack — wa
rated a high rik. Prater — who i white — wa rated a low rik.
Two ear later, we know the computer algorithm got it exactl ackward. orden ha not een charged
with an new crime. Prater i erving an eight-ear prion term for uequentl reaking into a
warehoue and tealing thouand of dollar’ worth of electronic.
core like thi — known a rik aement — are increaingl common in courtroom acro the
nation. The are ued to inform deciion aout who can e et free at ever tage of the criminal jutice
tem, from aigning ond amount — a i the cae in Fort Lauderdale — to even more fundamental
deciion aout defendant’ freedom. In Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Kentuck, Louiiana, Oklahoma,
Virginia, Wahington and Wiconin, the reult of uch aement are given to judge during
criminal entencing.
Rating a defendant’ rik of future crime i often done in conjunction with an evaluation of a defendant’
rehailitation need. The Jutice Department’ National Intitute of Correction now encourage the ue
of uch comined aement at ever tage of the criminal jutice proce. And a landmark entencing
reform ill currentl pending in Congre would mandate the ue of uch aement in federal
prion.
In 2014, then U.. Attorne General ric Holder
warned that the rik core might e injecting ia
into the court. He called for the U.. entencing
Commiion to tud their ue. “Although thee
meaure were crafted with the et of intention, I
am concerned that the inadvertentl undermine
our e�orts to ensure individualized and equal
jutice,” he aid, adding, “the ma exacerate
unwarranted and unjut diparitie that are alread
far too common in our criminal jutice tem and
in our ociet.”
The entencing commiion did not, however,
launch a tud of rik core. o ProPulica did, a
part of a larger examination of the pow erful, lar gel
hidden e�ect of algorithms in American life.
ProPublica on bias in crime risk
assessment software models (2016)