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US Lawmakers Tell DOJ to Quit Blindly Funding ‘Predictive’ Police Tools
Members of Congress say the DOJ is funding the use of AI tools that further discriminatory policing practices. They're demanding higher standards for federal grants.
Led by Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat of Oregon, the lawmakers say the DOJ is required by law to “periodically review” whether grant recipients comply with Title VI of the nation’s Civil Rights Act. Independent investigations in the press have found that popular “predictive” policing tools trained on historical crime data often replicate long-held biases, offering law enforcement, at best, a veneer of scientific legitimacy while perpetuating the over-policing of predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. “Predictive policing systems rely on historical data distorted by falsified crime reports and disproportionate arrests of people of color,” Wyden and the other lawmakers wrote, predicting— as many researchers have —that the technology serves only to create “dangerous” feedback loops.
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