COMPAS is an AI based system to predict recidivism, that is the likelihood that someone reoffends after leaving prison. It was trained on US data and has been used, controversially, in US courts as part of parole decsion making. Analysis has suggested that the outputs may embody a degree of racial bias.
In fact the data is really good example of the way that different fairness measures may lead to wildly contradictory outcomes, often due to deeper structural inequality.
Used in glossary entries: bias
Links:
web.archive.org: ProPublica: How We Analyzed the COMPAS Recidivism Algorithm (as published in 2016)- propublica.org: ProPublica: Machine Bias: There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. (original ProPublica article)
- Wikipedia: COMPAS (software)
- propublica.org: ProPublica: How We Analyzed the COMPAS Recidivism Algorithm (updated version without graphs)