Artificial intelligence now deciding if suspected criminals can walk free

In late August, Hercules Shepherd Jr, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, walked up to the dock in a Cleveland courtroom. Two nights earlier, an officer had arrested him at a traffic stop and found a small bag of cocaine, and Shepherd was about to be arraigned. Not long ago, the presiding judge would have decided Shepherd's near-term future based on a reading of court files and his own intuition. But in Cleveland and a growing number of other local and state courts, judges are now guided by computer algorithms before ruling whether criminal defendants can return to everyday life or have to stay locked up awaiting trial. In some states, the centuries-old process of releasing defendants on bail, long the province of judicial discretion, is getting help from artificial intelligence (AI).