Algorithms correcting real sentencing disparities could violate equal protection law
Evidence
Some might argue that, even if the steps outlined above are followed, there are insurmountable problems with using legal technology to decrease bias. For instance, we know that when there are similarly situated male and female defendants, male defendants receive more severe sentences. If a prosecutor’s office built out their data collection and analysis capabilities, they would be able to quantify the extent of this pro-female bias. But if they installed an algorithm that corrected for this bias, this could be considered a violation of the Equal Protection Clause (see Starr, 2014; Oleson, 2011). If we imagine parallel and analogous algorithmic uses, we might find violations of Title VII. Indeed, it seems that algorithmic correction would be a form of discrimination—or so goes the argument. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1207
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely paradoxical tension: the very law meant to prevent discrimination may forbid the algorithmic correction of documented bias — the corrective tool and the legal norm are at odds.
- SEED: Article angle: the legal catch-22 where affirmative algorithmic correction of measured sentencing bias runs into Equal Protection — a fresh take on algorithmic fairness beyond the usual COMPAS debates.
Related
- Algorithms that correct documented bias may themselves violate equal protection law (similarity 0.94)
- Algorithms can be reweighted to equality-neutral treatments that correct documented bias. (similarity 0.81)
- Proponents argue careful algorithm design can curtail implicit racial bias in court (similarity 0.79)