Objectives

We examine public attitudes towards false positives and false negatives in criminal justice risk assessment and how people’s choices differ in varying offenses and stages.

Methods

We use data from a factorial survey experiment conducted with a sample of 575 Americans. Respondents were randomly assigned to different conditions in the vignette for the criminal justice process and the offense severity and were asked to choose the cost ratio.

Results

While people prefer the cost ratio with higher false positives, the degree to which they accept false positives is lower than the cost ratios of existing risk assessments. The offense severity impacts people’s acceptance of false positives. Meanwhile, numeracy influences people’s decisions on the cost ratio.

Conclusions

To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate public opinion on the cost ratio in risk assessments. We suggest that public opinion on the cost ratio can be an alternative way to find the ideal cost ratio.

中文翻译：

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假阳性与假阴性：关于刑事司法风险评估成本比的舆论

目标

我们研究了公众对刑事司法风险评估中误报和误报的态度，以及人们在不同犯罪和阶段的选择如何不同。

方法

我们使用来自对 575 名美国人样本进行的因子调查实验的数据。受访者被随机分配到刑事司法程序和犯罪严重程度的小插曲中的不同条件，并被要求选择成本比率。

结果

虽然人们更喜欢误报率较高的成本比率，但他们接受误报的程度低于现有风险评估的成本比率。违规严重程度会影响人们对误报的接受程度。同时，计算能力影响人们对成本比率的决定。

结论

据我们所知，这是第一项调查公众对风险评估成本比率的看法的研究。我们建议公众对成本比率的看法可以作为寻找理想成本比率的替代方法。