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    A Popular Algorithm Is No Better at Predicting Crimes Than Random People

    The COMPAS tool is widely used to assess a defendant’s risk of committing more crimes, but a new study puts its usefulness into perspective.
    by Ed Yong Jan 17, 2018 4 minutes
    Source: Arijit Mondal / Getty

    In February 2013, Eric Loomis was found driving a car that had been used in a shooting. He was arrested, and pleaded guilty to eluding an officer. In determining his sentence, a judge looked not just to his criminal record, but also to a score assigned by a tool called COMPAS.

    Developed by a private company called Equivant (formerly Northpointe), COMPAS—or the Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions—purports to predict a defendant’s risk of committing another crime. It works through a proprietary algorithm that considers some of the answers to a 137-item questionnaire.

    COMPAS is one of several such being used around the country to predict hot spots of violent crime, determine the types of supervision that inmates

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