Justice Can't Be Colorblind: How to Fight Bias with Predictive Policing

Originally published by Scientific American. Law enforcement's use of predictive analytics recently came under fire again. Dartmouth researchers made waves reporting that simple predictive models--as well as nonexpert humans--predict crime just as well as the leading proprietary analytics software. That the leading software achieves (only) human-level performance might not actually be a deadly blow, but a flurry of press from dozens of news outlets has quickly followed. In any case, even as this disclosure raises questions about one software tool's credibility, a more enduring, inherent quandary continues to plague predictive policing.