LibGuides: Search Engines, Algorithms and Bias: Algorithms in Criminal Justice

Predictive algorithms may help us shop, discover new music or literature, but do they belong in the courthouse? Dartmouth professor Dr. Hany Farid reverse engineers the inherent dangers and potential biases of recommendations engines built to mete out justice in today's criminal justice system. The co-founder and CTO of Fourandsix Technologies, an image authentication and forensics company, Hany Farid works to advance the field of digital forensics.

Recommended Articles

Machine Bias | ProPublica
There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. By Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner, ProPublica, May 23, 2016
The Solution to the Pervasive Bias and Discrimination in the Criminal Justice System: Transparent and Fair Artificial Intelligence
By Mirko Bagaric, Jennifer Svilar, Melissa Bull, Dan Hunter, & Nigel Stobbs, American Criminal Law Review, Georgtown, 2022.
Justice in the Age of Big Data
Justice should be blind, right? Unfortunately, the predictive policing software used in much of the US has bias and misunderstanding programmed right into it, says data scientist Cathy O’Neil. Ted Ideas, 2017.
Algorithms Were Supposed to Reduce Bias in Criminal Justice—Do They?
Algorithms were supposed to remake the American justice system. Championed as dispassionate, computer-driven calculations about risk, crime, and recidivism, their deployment in everything from policing to bail and sentencing to parole was meant to smooth out what are often unequal decisions made by fallible, biased humans. But, so far, this hasn’t been the case. Boston University, 2023.
Artificial Intelligence in Predictive Policing Issue Brief
Issue Brief by the NAACP.