Raising the Bar for Legal Algorithms

July 27, 2018

The legal system increasingly uses “risk assessment” algorithms in making decisions about bail, sentencing, and parole, but an official at a nonprofit legal association says these tools “are too rapidly acquiring an exalted place in human decision-making.” An independent research consultant earlier argued this case in Issues, and she proposed ways to improve their use, including making the nuts and bolts of the algorithms more transparent, subjecting them to independent audit, and using them only if they demonstrably serve to reduce pretrial incarcerations.

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