False Positives, False Negatives, and False Analyses: A Rejoinder to "Machine Bias: There's Software Used across the Country to Predict Future Criminals. and It's Biased against Blacks"
PROPUBLICA RECENTLY RELEASED a much heralded investigative report claim ing that a risk assessment tool (known as the COMPAS) used in criminal justice is biased against black defendants.12 The report heavily implied that such bias is inherent in all actuarial risk assessment instruments (ARAIs) We think ProPublica's report was based on faulty statistics and data analysis, and that the report failed to show that the COMPAS itself is racially biased, let alone that other risk instruments are biased. Not only do ProPublica's results contradict several com prehensive existing studies concluding that actuarial risk can be predicted free of racial