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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday February 19 2020, @02:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the revolving-door dept.

Algorithms 'consistently' more accurate than people in predicting recidivism, study says:

In a study with potentially far-reaching implications for criminal justice in the United States, a team of California researchers has found that algorithms are significantly more accurate than humans in predicting which defendants will later be arrested for a new crime.

[...] "Risk assessment has long been a part of decision-making in the criminal justice system," said Jennifer Skeem, a psychologist who specializes in criminal justice at UC Berkeley. "Although recent debate has raised important questions about algorithm-based tools, our research shows that in contexts resembling real criminal justice settings, risk assessments are often more accurate than human judgment in predicting recidivism. That's consistent with a long line of research comparing humans to statistical tools."

"Validated risk-assessment instruments can help justice professionals make more informed decisions," said Sharad Goel, a computational social scientist at Stanford University. "For example, these tools can help judges identify and potentially release people who pose little risk to public safety. But, like any tools, risk assessment instruments must be coupled with sound policy and human oversight to support fair and effective criminal justice reform."

The paper—"The limits of human predictions of recidivism"—was slated for publication Feb. 14, 2020, in Science Advances. Skeem presented the research on Feb. 13 in a news briefing at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Seattle, Wash. Joining her were two co-authors: Ph.D. graduate Jongbin Jung and Ph.D. candidate Zhiyuan "Jerry" Lin, who both studied computational social science at Stanford.

More information:
Z. Lin, et al. The limits of human predictions of recidivism [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz0652)


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 19 2020, @08:41PM (2 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday February 19 2020, @08:41PM (#959997)

    Lots of Governors get, and hold, office with a "tough on crime" PR campaign. Texas seems to love Governors who preside over record numbers of executions. And, although race is a "protected from discrimination" trait under federal law, that doesn't stop the locals from skewing things based on race just as far as they can without tripping the federal statutes into action - no, they don't call it racially based, that's just how it works out when you examine the final statistics.

    A friend of ours is a Harvard PhD psychologist, slumming it in the local drug rehab program. She's only funded to process about 15% of the local cases, the other 85% just go straight to the pen. Her program's recidivism rates are less than 25% of the recidivism rates for convicts who don't get into her program, but... her funding is perpetually jerked around, mostly down. The judges, and the county that elects them, don't really care - they get some federal dollars for running her program, and that's basically the only reason they do it. There are cops in that county who joined the force with the sole agenda of bustin' niggers on drug charges - and that's basically all they do, all day long. Traffic stops (profiled, of course) are just an excuse to search for drugs. They're representative of a lot of the voters, not everywhere, but there - and a lot of other "red leaning" counties.

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  • (Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday February 19 2020, @08:48PM (1 child)

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 19 2020, @08:48PM (#960001) Journal

    Yeah, and I wish we, collectively, were better, but it's not like you're gonna have law enforcement of all things done some other way than through politics. There's no social cadre of educated elites I'd trust with questions of right and wrong more than the stupid, asinine, often outright insane general public. Democracy sucks, but not as bad as much as being policed by your "betters".

    • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:25PM

      by JoeMerchant (3937) on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:25PM (#960017)

      here's no social cadre of educated elites I'd trust

      Oh, if anything they're worse - mostly because they're so perpetually sure that they are right. Even after having a huge in their face example of: you didn't know WTF you were talking about, they double down on just how right they are sure they are the next time.

      I just wish there was a way to equalize the results - any time a policy comes down unevenly across the population, the self-identified suffering minority gets to pick any group that supported the policy to suffer the same effects. Sort of the: I'll divide this ice cream and you get to pick who gets which half scheme.

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