Treatment equality across racial groups requires differential model predictions per group

Evidence

Not all defendants are treated as if they are White, but all similarly situated defendants are treated similarly (see Aliverti, Lum, Johndrow, & Dunson, 2018; Johndrow & Lum, 2018). With such a model, Black defendants on average receive more lenient treatment than a pure Black-trained model would predict, and White defendants on average receive more severe treatment than a pure White-trained model would predict, bringing into relief the abovementioned fact that the power to be lenient is the power to discriminate. — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1220

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s work on the divergence between professed commitment and measured institutional behavior — algorithmic ‘fairness’ definitions here reveal how equal-treatment procedures can bake in or mask group differences.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law: A Definitive Look at…, 1220