Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Law
An Algorithmic Assessment Of Parole Decisions, Hannah Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus
An Algorithmic Assessment Of Parole Decisions, Hannah Lacqueur, Ryan W. Copus
Faculty Works
Objectives: Parole is an important mechanism for alleviating the extraordinary social and financial costs of mass incarceration. Yet parole boards can also present a major obstacle, denying parole to low-risk inmates who could safely be released from prison. We evaluate a major parole institution, the New York State Parole Board, quantifying the costs of suboptimal decision-making.
Methods: Using ensemble Machine Learning, we predict any arrest and any violent felony arrest within three years to generate criminal risk predictions for individuals released on parole in New York from 2012–2015. We quantify the social welfare loss of the Board’s suboptimal decisions by …
Put Down The Phone! The Standard For Witness Interviews Is In-Person, Face-To-Face, One-On-One., Sean O'Brien, Quinn O'Brien, Dana Cook
Put Down The Phone! The Standard For Witness Interviews Is In-Person, Face-To-Face, One-On-One., Sean O'Brien, Quinn O'Brien, Dana Cook
Faculty Works
Professor and capital defense attorney Sean O’Brien, private investigator Quinn O’Brien, and mitigation specialist Dana Cook team up in this article to explain why the standard for competent defense investigation requires face-to-face, one-on-one, culturally competent client and witness interviews, and why short cuts to investigation, such as telephone calls or remote video links, are counter-productive, prone to failure, and constitute substandard work. Although the primary focus of this article is on standards that apply to capital mitigation work, the problems created by remote witness interviews are not unique to death penalty work; there are persuasive arguments and authority that the …
Broken Infrastructure, Del C. Wright Jr.