IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/crimin/v61y2021i3p832-851..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

When Politicization Stops Algorithms in Criminal Justice
[‘Smart On Crime: The New Language for Prisoner Release’]

Author

Listed:
  • Pascal D König
  • Georg Wenzelburger

Abstract

The present paper sheds light on the conditions for successfully implementing pretrial risk assessment tools by looking at barriers to their implementation and, specifically, political factors that can derail this process. Drawing on theoretical assumptions about the role of agenda-setting and public discourse in policy change, we examine three US states where the implementation of pretrial tools was halted or heavily restricted. Our findings suggest that a politicization of these tools plays a central role for thwarting their implementation. This has less to do with their technical properties or performance. Rather, through reaching high-level politics, those tools are publicly linked to concerns about opacity, fairness and public safety such that it simply becomes politically safer for politicians to stick with the status quo.

Suggested Citation

  • Pascal D König & Georg Wenzelburger, 2021. "When Politicization Stops Algorithms in Criminal Justice [‘Smart On Crime: The New Language for Prisoner Release’]," The British Journal of Criminology, Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, vol. 61(3), pages 832-851.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:61:y:2021:i:3:p:832-851.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/bjc/azaa099
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:crimin:v:61:y:2021:i:3:p:832-851.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/bjc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.