At Forbes: Unfairness of Risk Scores in Sentencing
Over at Forbes, I blogged about a recent Wisconsin Supreme Court decision upholding the use of automated risk scores in criminal sentencing. The post begins:
In a ruling today, the Wisconsin Supreme Court sanctioned the use of COMPAS risk assessment scores about a defendant’s potential recidivism in sentencing, so long as judges receive written warnings about the value of such scores and don’t rely on them exclusively. In that case, Eric Loomis challenged the trial court’s use of COMPAS scores in sentencing on due process grounds. Defendant’s argument boiled down to this: it was unfair to rely on a score whose accuracy cannot be assessed, interrogated, and challenged. Loomis and his attorneys certainly had notice about the score, but how the private company Northpointe came up with it was a mystery. The scoring system is a trade-secret protected black box, as my colleague Frank Pasquale would say.
See the rest here.