RT Article
T1 When Politicization Stops Algorithms in Criminal Justice
JF The British journal of criminology
VO 61
IS 3
SP 832
OP 851
A1 König, Pascal
A2 Wenzelburger, Georg 1981-
LA English
YR 2021
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1760586579
AB The present paper sheds light on the conditions for successfully implementing pretrial risk assessment tools by looking at barriers to their implementation and, specifically, political factors that can derail this process. Drawing on theoretical assumptions about the role of agenda-setting and public discourse in policy change, we examine three US states where the implementation of pretrial tools was halted or heavily restricted. Our findings suggest that a politicization of these tools plays a central role for thwarting their implementation. This has less to do with their technical properties or performance. Rather, through reaching high-level politics, those tools are publicly linked to concerns about opacity, fairness and public safety such that it simply becomes politically safer for politicians to stick with the status quo.
K1 Risk assessment
K1 algorithmic decision-making
K1 Pretrial
K1 agenda-setting
K1 policy termination
DO 10.1093/bjc/azaa099