Artificial Justice

Imagine that Eric, a young man, has been convicted of a gang-related crime: he was found by police at the scene of a robbery carried out by his friends. The sentencing judge now needs to make a decision. Not knowing whether Eric poses a risk to the public, she turns to an algorithmic risk assessment - a set of rules, developed on the basis of correlations between individual characteristics and criminal activity, which predicts the likelihood of recidivism. Eric is a conscientious citizen, w...