Science and Technology Studies Commons^™

This paper critically examines the use of predictive analytics in U.S. criminal justice policy and practice, with a particular focus on the ways in which these technological practices are reproducing and reinforcing structural relations of difference. Adopting a new materialist lens, which posits algorithms as more-than-human ontologies, the paper explores the process by which algorithms become racializing assemblages through their encounters with administrative data generated at various stages of criminal justice, and guided by choices made by decision makers and researchers. It addresses the following questions: In what ways do the algorithms become part of a larger sociotechnical apparatus of …