ABSTRACT

Violence risk instruments are used in numerous countries to estimate an individual’s risk of reoffending. The racial fairness of violence risk instruments has received increasing attention due to ostensible differences among Anglo populations and racial minorities (e.g. African Americans and Indigenous populations). Fairness, which has numerous definitions (sensitivity fairness, error rate balance, calibration, predictive parity, statistical parity), can affect a risk instrument’s utility in varying ways. This literature review explored how notions of fairness are discussed in the risk instrument literature with a specific focus on racial fairness. It also examined and critiqued the varying proposed resolutions to increase fairness. Many of these forms of fairness were found to be rarely satisfied in the literature. Further, the complications in achieving multiple forms of fairness simultaneously and the challenges of optimising both fairness and accuracy are discussed. Last, proposed solutions to increase racial fairness were often found to encompass significant limitations. Future directions for racial fairness in risk instruments are discussed, with a focus on exploring the trade-offs among varying fairness definitions and among fairness and accuracy.

摘要

许多国家都使用暴力风险工具来估计个人再次犯罪的风险。由于盎格鲁人口和少数族裔（例如非洲裔美国人和土著人口）之间的表面差异，暴力风险工具的种族公平性越来越受到关注。公平有许多定义（敏感性公平、错误率平衡、校准、预测平价、统计平价），可以以不同方式影响风险工具的效用。这篇文献综述探讨了如何在风险工具文献中讨论公平概念，特别关注种族公平。它还审查并批评了为提高公平性而提出的各种不同的决议。许多这些形式的公平在文献中很少得到满足。更远，讨论了同时实现多种形式的公平的复杂性以及优化公平和准确性的挑战。最后，增加种族公平的建议解决方案经常被发现包含重大限制。讨论了风险工具中种族公平的未来方向，重点是探索不同公平定义之间以及公平性和准确性之间的权衡。