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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
n February 2013, Eric Loomis was found driving a car that had been used in a shooting. He was arrested, and pleaded guilty to eluding an officer. In determining his sentence, a judge looked not just to his criminal record, but also to a score assigned by a tool called COMPAS.
Developed by a private company called Equivant (formerly Northpointe), COMPAS—or the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions—purports to predict a defendant's risk of committing another crime. It works through a proprietary algorithm that considers some of the answers to a 137-item questionnaire.
COMPAS is one of several such risk-assessment algorithms being used around the country to predict hot spots of violent crime, determine the types of supervision that inmates might need, or—as in Loomis's case—provide information that might be useful in sentencing. COMPAS classified him as high-risk of re-offending, and Loomis was sentenced to six years.
He appealed the ruling on the grounds that the judge, in considering the outcome of an algorithm whose inner workings were secretive and could not be examined, violated due process. The appeal went up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, who ruled against Loomis, noting that the sentence would have been the same had COMPAS never been consulted. Their ruling, however, urged caution and skepticism in the algorithm's use.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/01/equivant-compas-algorithm/550646/
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Monday January 22 2018, @12:34AM (2 children)
In the far greater percentage of cases "Victim statements" are just there to quell the rage, provide a false sense of cathartic retribution, and give victims an illusion in having some say in the process.
Its not at all clear that this testimony has any effect on sentencing (other than to reduce sentences, because, after all the victims had their say).
If you believe in "correction" you probably are in favor of victim statements.
If you believe that incarceration is to provide society some brief period of less risk, you probably find them useless for sentencing purposes.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday January 22 2018, @01:08AM
Victim statements are not the only testimony allowed at sentencing hearings. It depends on the venue and the judge, but sometimes you also get statements from "character witnesses" for the defense and occasionally expert witnesses. (Sentencing in death penalty cases can be particularly prolonged.)
But yes, the value of victim statements is debatable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @03:39AM
I was talking with a judge once about the Victim Impact Statements and their effect on the sentences given out. According to him, in the majority of cases, they don't change a thing as they just aren't useful or reiterate stuff he already knows from other sources. In the minority of cases, they cause him to reduce the sentence as the reaction of the defendant is one of genuine remorse or the victim makes a good case for probation modifications. In one case, however, it actually caused him to increase his sentence as the victim asked him to reduce the defendant's sentence because it wasn't the Christian thing to punish him as she forgave him, didn't believe in that sort of retribution and similar things while being moved to tears; the defendant, on the other hand, was completely unmoved and even called the victim "a stupid bitch" as she walked past to her seat. Judge decided to turn the few hundred dollars in restitution (which the victim had declined) into a fine in the tens of thousands thanks to that remark.