Flaws plague a tool meant to help low-risk federal prisoners win early release

[WhiskeyGrinder]

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/26/1075509175/flaws-plague-a-tool-meant-to-help-low-risk-federal-prisoners-win-early-release

Thousands of people are leaving federal prison this month thanks to a law called the First Step Act, which allowed them to win early release by participating in programs aimed at easing their return to society.

But thousands of others may still remain behind bars because of fundamental flaws in the Justice Department's method for deciding who can take the early-release track. The biggest flaw: persistent racial disparities that put Black and brown people at a disadvantage.

In a report issued days before Christmas in 2021, the department said its algorithmic tool for assessing the risk a person in prison would return to crime produced uneven results. The algorithm, known as Pattern, overpredicted the risk that many Black, Hispanic and Asian people would commit new crimes or violate rules after leaving prison. At the same time, it also underpredicted the risk for some inmates of color when it came to possible return to violent crime.

(snip)

"The Justice Department found that only 7% of Black people in the sample were classified as minimum level risk compared to 21% of white people," she added. "This indicator alone should give the Department of Justice great pause in moving forward."

[NJCher]

1. The effort should be applauded,

But I don’t see this going anywhere. Back to the drawing board.

[cinematicdiversions]

2. Why would race even be included in the formula

And if the algorithm doesn't include race then it isn't race itself causing these disparities.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. As far as I can tell, it's not. But because Black people and other minorities are overpoliced and

over-adjudicated, an AI can interpret that as meaning they're higher-risk prisoners. GIGO.

[cinematicdiversions]

4. Perhaps but everyone is still in jail. So presumably they all have records

It's the mortgage problem.

Study after study shows African Americans are refused mortgages at a higher rate than others. Easy answer was always racism (or unconscious bias if you are being polite)

Here is the rub though. If you have gotten a mortgage in the last ten years you might realise that you don't actually see anyone. It is an online affair. So outside of a box the government makes you check and maybe a scan of your photo ID it simply race is taken out of the picture.

Yet the numbers showing racial bias have barely moved suggesting the issue was elsewhere all along.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. Actually, this is the whole point of Critical Race Theory.

Critical Race Theory explains why we get racist results from systems even when we try to eliminate them -- it's because the systems themselves are racist. It's not necessarily the mortgage broker who gives a Black couple a worse rate or turns them down; in the aggregate, it's the formula itself.

Perhaps but everyone is still in jail. So presumably they all have records

Sure, but even if a Black person and a white person are imprisoned for the same crime, the length of sentences or other circumstances are likely to be different because we live in a white supremacy. And an AI developed in a white supremacy is going to deliver a white supremacist outcome, even if we don't tell it the race of people involved.