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The Mathematics of the American Justice System

posted by martyb on Tuesday October 18 2016, @12:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the does-not-add-up dept.

Kromagv0 writes:

The BBC is reporting on the Compas assessment, Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions. This tool is used by a number of agencies to assess if someone is likely to commit additional crimes and the resulting score is used in determining bail, sentencing, or determining parole. The article points out that while the questions on the assessment do not include race the resulting score may be correlated with race but this is disputed by the software's creators. The assessment scores someone on a 10 point scale but the algorithm used to determine someone's score is kept secret. Because of this defendants are unable to effectively dispute that the score is incorrect.

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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:37AM

    by FatPhil (863) <reversethis-{if.fdsa} {ta} {tnelyos-cp}> on Wednesday October 19 2016, @07:37AM (#416058) Homepage
    Ferranti once realised they'd find it hard to make their first delivery of an IT system to the UK navy. On scouring the fine print, they realised that the only thing that was unambiguously specified for the first drop was the weight of the system. So they delivered boxes of sand weighing the appropriate amount, and clearly having no electronics at all. And got away with it.

    This system may be equally well specified.
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