Holder Cautions on Risk of Bias in Big Data Use in Criminal Justice …
Associated Press
WASHINGTON—Attorney General Eric Holder warned Friday that a new generation of data-driven criminal justice programs could adversely affect poor and minority groups, saying such efforts need to be studied further before they are used to sentence suspects.
In a speech in Philadelphia to a gathering of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Mr. Holder cautioned that while such data tools hold promise, they also pose potential dangers.
“By basing sentencing decisions on static factors and immutable characteristics—like the defendant’s education level, socioeconomic background, or neighborhood—they may exacerbate unwarranted and unjust disparities that are already far too common in our criminal justice system and in our society,” Mr. Holder told the defense lawyers. Criminal sentences, he said, “should not be based on unchangeable factors that a person cannot control, or on the possibility of a future crime that has not taken place.”
The attorney general applauded other uses of aggregate data collection in criminal justice, such as crime mapping pioneered by the New York Police Department, and steering certain defendants toward non-prison rehabilitation programs.
At issue is a trend toward statistical analysis made famous by the book and movie, “Moneyball,” about a baseball general manager who used sets of data to better predict which players would succeed.
That approach has since moved into other sports, and other professions, including criminal justice. Some states and localities have begun using risk assessment calculations to help decide which suspects should be released on bail while awaiting trial, and which ones should be sent to jail to await trial.
States are beginning to experiment with data-driven risk assessments to help determine prison sentences. Pennsylvania and Tennessee have passed laws requiring the use of risk assessments in sentencing decisions. Kentucky has a project to apply risk assessments to determine which defendants should be released on bail while awaiting trial.
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Holder Cautions on Risk of Bias in Big Data Use in Criminal Justice …
