Louisiana prison board uses algorithms to determine eligility for parole

Summary

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Verite News. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published. Reporting Highlights Limiting Parole: A new law pushed by Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry cedes much of the power of the parole board to an algorithm that prevents thousands of prisoners from early release. Immutable Risk Score: The risk assessment tool, TIGER, does not take into account efforts prisoners make to rehabilitate themselves. Instead, it focuses on factors that cannot be changed. Racial Bias: Civil rights attorneys say the new law could disproportionately harm Black people in part because the algorithm measures factors where racial disparities already exist. These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story. Calvin Alexander thought he had done everything the Louisiana parole board asked of him to earn an early release from prison. He had taken anger management classes, learned a trade and enrolled in drug treatment. And as his September hearing before the board approached, his disciplinary record was clean. Alexander, more than midway through a 20-year prison sentence on drug charges, was making preparations for what he hoped would be his new life. His daughter, with whom he had only recently become acquainted, had even made up a room for him in her New Orleans home. Then, two months before the hearing date, prison officials sent Alexander a letter informing him he was no longer eligible for parole. A computerized scoring system adopted by the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections had deemed the nearly blind 70-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, a moderate risk of reoffending, should he be released. And under a new law, that meant he and thousands of other prisoners with moderate or high risk ratings cannot plead their cases before the board. According to the department of corrections, about 13,000 people — nearly half the state’s ...