Criminal
Aug. 19, 2016
Bail algorithm falters on its promise
San Francisco's risk assessment algorithm isn't race neutral as advertised, but instead relies heavily on prior convictions to generate risk scores. By Jeff Adachi
Call it life imitating art. In Philip K. Dick's science fiction story "Minority Report," set in the year 2054, a "pre-crime" police unit makes arrests based upon future crimes. In 2016, San Francisco began locking people up - or setting them free - based on a secret algorithm called the Public Safety Assessment, or PSA, that predicts whether they'll reoffend while awaiting trial.
Today's risk-gauging tool relies not on psych...
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