Pennsylvania Wants To Use Science In Criminal Sentencing

[news]

[news]

It's not quite "Minority Report," but Pennsylvania is looking to the future in its criminal sentencing policy. As early as next year, Pennsylvania judges could receive risk assessments -- statistically derived tools based on age, sex and prior arrests -- to help them decide how likely a criminal is to commit more crimes and sentence that person accordingly. Anna Maria Barry-Jester, a public health reporter for FiveThirtyEight, talked with HuffPost Live on Monday about how this form of sentencing would work for the state.

"They take a lot of information about people who commit crimes and see what characteristics are most associated with reoffending," Barry-Jester told host Alyona Minkovski. "So then they come up with something that's sort of like a questionnaire, and try to determine the risk of a person who's like that person in terms of if they will reoffend."

Watch Barry-Jester describe risk assessments for prisoners and the danger of unfair biases against certain groups in the video above.

Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live's new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!

Also on HuffPost: 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.












More...