ProPublica reports racial bias in COMPAS risk scores

Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner analyzed Northpointe’s COMPAS recidivism software, used by courts across the United States, and found Black defendants nearly twice as likely as white defendants to be wrongly flagged as high risk.

Why it mattered Northpointe disputed the statistical method. The exchange set the terms for a decade of research on fairness in algorithmic decisions about people.