Risk Assessments are the Diagnosis not the Cure: How Using Algorithms as Diagnostic Tools Can Prevent the Bait-And-Switch of Unconstitutional Pretrial Practices

This Comment takes a closer look at the very timely debate revolving around the cash bail system. This Comment surveys the history of bail, addresses the problems caused by cash bail, evaluates the two main schools of thought on bail reform, and proposes a comprehensive solution to the identified problems

Reducing Racial and Ethnic Disparities In Jails: Recommendations for Local Practice

People of color are overrepresented in our criminal justice system. One in three African American men born today will be incarcerated in his lifetime. In some cities, African Americans are ten times more likely to be arrested when stopped by police. With the national debate national focused on race, crime, and punishment, criminal justice experts are examining how to reduce racial disparities in our prisons and jails, which often serve as initial entry points for those who become entangled in the criminal justice system. This report, which relies on input from 25 criminal justice leaders, pinpoints the drivers of racial disparities in our jails lays out common sense reforms to reduce this disparity, including increasing public defense representation for misdemeanor offenses, encouraging prosecutors to prioritize serious and violent offenses, limiting the use of pretrial detention, and requiring training to reduce racial bias for all those involved in running our justice system.https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facbooks/1031/thumbnail.jp

\u3cem\u3eTechnological Tethereds\u3c/em\u3e: Potential Impact of Untrustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Justice Risk Assessment Instruments

Issues of racial inequality and violence are front and center today, as are issues surrounding artificial intelligence (“AI”). This Article, written by a law professor who is also a computer scientist, takes a deep dive into understanding how and why hacked and rogue AI creates unlawful and unfair outcomes, particularly for persons of color. Black Americans are disproportionally featured in criminal justice, and their stories are obfuscated. The seemingly endless back-to-back murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and heartbreakingly countless others have finally shaken the United States from its slumbering journey towards intentional criminal justice reform. Myths about Black crime and criminals are embedded in the data collected by AI and do not tell the truth about race and crime. However, the number of Black people harmed by hacked and rogue AI will dwarf all historical records, and the gravity of harm is incomprehensible. The lack of technical transparency and legal accountability leaves wrongfully convicted defendants without legal remedies if they are unlawfully detained based on a cyberattack, faulty or hacked data, or rogue AI. Scholars and engineers acknowledge that the artificial intelligence that is giving recommendations to law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and parole boards lacks the common sense of an eighteen-month-old child. This Article reviews the ways AI is used in the legal system and the courts’ response to this use. It outlines the design schemes of proprietary risk assessment instruments used in the criminal justice system, outlines potential legal theories for victims, and provides recommendations for legal and technical remedies to victims of hacked data in criminal justice risk assessment instruments. It concludes that, with proper oversight, AI can increase fairness in the criminal justice system, but without this oversight, AI-based products will further exacerbate the extinguishment of liberty interests enshrined in the Constitution. According to anti-lynching advocate, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, “The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” Thus, transparency is vital to safeguarding equity through AI design and must be the first step. The Article seeks ways to provide that transparency, for the benefit of all America, but particularly persons of color who are far more likely to be impacted by AI deficiencies. It also suggests legal reforms that will help plaintiffs recover when AI goes rogue

Why Arrest?

Arrests are the paradigmatic police activity. Though the practice of arrests in the United States, especially arrests involving minority suspects, is under attack, even critics widely assume the power to arrest is essential to policing. As a result, neither commentators nor scholars have asked why police need to make arrests. This Article takes up that question, and it argues that the power to arrest and the use of that power should be curtailed. The twelve million arrests police conduct each year are harmful not only to the individual arrested but also to their families and communities and to society as a whole. Given their costs, arrests should be used only when they serve an important state interest; yet, they often happen even when no such interest exists. Governments have allowed constitutional law to become the primary constraint on arrest practices, and it has proved a poor proxy for good policy analysis. The Fourth Amendment permits arrests whenever an officer has probable cause: it has no mechanism for ensuring that the state has any interest in making an arrest—as opposed to starting the criminal process in another way. More broadly, traditional arguments for arrests cannot justify existing arrest practice. Arrests are usually unnecessary to start the criminal process effectively, to maintain order, to collect evidence, or to deter crime. In most cases, reasonable, less intrusive, alternative means exist or could exist for achieving these ends. Even arrests for some serious crimes might be curbed significantly without risking substantial harm to public safety or order. If the state can achieve its law enforcement objectives without arrests, then police departments should conduct far fewer arrests than they currently do, and states should restrict the statutory authority to arrest accordingly. Though there are risks to reducing arrests, those risks are far less problematic than continuing what is presently a massive, and largely unnecessary, enterprise of state coercion