Yesterday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld a six-year prison sentence for 34-year-old man Eric Loomis, who was appealing his sentence after pleading guilty to fleeing the police. At issue was the fact that Mr Loomis’ sentencing judge had cited the man’s COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Santions) score when handing down his original sentence. COMPAS is a popular sentencing tool that plugs data from a 137-question test into an algorithm designed to predict the likelihood that an individual will re-offend once released from custody. The test covers a range of variables including age, parole history, employment status, social life, education level, drug use, community ties and beliefs.
Limitations and biases
Mr Loomis’ lawyer argued that COMPAS violated his client’s right to due process as the company that makes the test and algorithm, Northpointe, doesn’t reveal how it weighs various answers in order to arrive at a final score. He also took issue with the fact that COMPAS ostensibly classes men as being at a higher risk of re-offending than women. However, Justice Bradley of the Wisconsin Supreme Court wrote that when ‘used properly’, tools like COMPAS do not violate a defendant’s right to due process. Justice Bradley ordered state officials to present COMPAS scores alongside disclaimers about the limitations of the test and potential in-built biases – such as that tests like COMPAS tend to disproportionately class black defendants as ‘higher risk’ than white ones. She also argued that using COMPAS to justify the length of sentences would be a ‘poor fit’, ordering instead that the test should only be used to divert low-risk defendants to non-prison alternatives or to measure capacity for community supervision over incarceration.
Source: Wall Street Journal; ABA Journal
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