Zusammenfassung
In diesem Beitrag stellen wir die Frage nach den praktischen und institutionellen Konsequenzen rechtsintrinsischer Digitalisierung am Beispiel von Risk Assessment Software an US-amerikanischen Gerichtshöfen aus theoretisch konzeptioneller und programmatischer Perspektive. Dazu werden Debatten um Recidivism Risk Assessment Sentencing Decision Support Systems (SDSS), wie etwa COMPAS, betrachtet sowie ihre Kerninhalte und diskursive Lücken identifiziert. Diese Softwaresysteme finden in den USA an County Courts Einsatz, um Strafmaß und Bewährungsoptionen in Strafrechtsverhandlungen zu eruieren. Durch die Auseinandersetzung mit den technischen Funktionsprinzipien solcher Software soll deren Bedeutung für die bestehenden Strukturen und Praxen judikativer Institutionen von einem technik- wie rechtssoziologischen, sozialtheoretischen Standpunkt aus beleuchtet werden. Dieser Art lassen sich drei wesentliche Verschiebungen in der US-amerikanischen Judikative identifizieren: (1) wie statistische Populationen, Modelle und Verfahren die Wissensproduktion und Problemwahrnehmung beeinflussen; (2) wie Risk Assessment Softwares als proprietäres Produkt die inter-institutionellen Grenzen zwischen Recht und Ökonomie, Strafrecht und Strafvollzug verwischen; (3) wie der Einsatz der Software intrainstitutionell auf die gerichtliche und außergerichtliche Expertise und performative Herstellung des bürgerlichen (Recht‑)Subjekts einwirkt. Diese Verschiebungen erscheinen perspektivisch aus einer Techniksoziologie des Rechts, die die Produktion von Wissen, Technologie, Rechtspraxen und -institutionen gleichermaßen und symmetrisch in den Blick nimmt. Nur unter diesen Voraussetzungen lassen sich rechtsintrinsische Technologien in ihren Bedingungen und Konsequenzen angemessen erfassen.
Abstract
With this contribution, we develop a theoretical perspective on the practical and institutional consequences of the digitization of law using the example of risk assessment software employed in US courts. Our article is based on the ongoing journalistic and scientific debates about recidivism risk assessment sentencing decision support systems (SDSS), such as COMPAS, which are being used in US county courts for criminal law issues to determine parole, custody and/or sentences. We summarize and highlight central contents and identify missing discourse positions in those debates. The basic technological concept of recidivism risk assessment SDSS is also taken into account. From there, we argue that three shifts have appeared in the US judiciary system: (1) statistical populations, models and methods shape knowledge production and the subsequent rise of new or additional discursive sensitivities and controversies; (2) risk assessment SDSS are blurring inter-institutional boundaries between law and economy, punitive justice and penitentiary; (3) risk assessment SDSS cause intra-institutional shifts, affecting the performativity of punitive judiciary and its practices of law and civic subjectivation. Thereby, this article is oriented towards a sociology of legal technology, analytically bringing together perspectives on the production of knowledge, technology, legal practices and legal institutions. Only, as we argue, by consequently thinking of the sociology of law together with the sociology of technology can the social phenomenon of legal-tech be understood adequately.
Notes
Die Firma wurde unter dem Namen Equivant neu gegründet. Da sich allerdings der hier diktierte Diskurs auf die Zeit bezieht, als Northpointe noch diesen Namen trug, wird dieser in diesem Beitrag genutzt.
Das Programm, welches Jasanoff hierbei verfolgt, kann theoretisch als auch programmatisch im Bereich des Kommunitarismus (vgl. Taylor 2004) verortet werden. Somit, und durch die starke Betonung der Strukturgenese durch die Realisierung objektivierter Werte und Normen, kann man diese Richtung der STS durchaus als eine Weiterführung des Parsons’schen Programms verstehen.
Literatur
Alarid, Leanne F., und Carlos D. Montemayor. 2010. Attorney perspectives and decisions on the presentence investigation report. A research note. Criminal Justice Policy Review 21(1):119–133.
Amoore, Louise. 2008. Risk before justice. When the law contests its own suspension. Leiden Journal of International Law 21(4):847–861.
Angwin, Julia, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu, und Lauren Kirchner. 2016. Machine Bias. There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing. Zugegriffen: 18. Sept. 2016.
Beer, David. 2017. The social power of algorithms. Information, Communication & Society 20(1):1–13.
Blumer, Herbert. 1954. What is wrong with social theory? American Sociological Review 19(1):3–10.
Bonta, James, und Don A. Andrews. 2007. Risk-need-responsivity model for offender assessment and rehabilitation. Rehabilitation 6(1):1–22.
Bonta, James, und Stephen J. Wormith. 2007. Risk and need assessment. In Developments in social work with offenders, Hrsg. G. McIvor, P. Raynor, 131–152. London, Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley.
Brennan, Tim, William Dieterich, und Beate Ehret. 2009. Evaluating the predictive validity of the compas risk and needs assessment system. Criminal Justice and Behavior 36(1):21–40. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854808326545.
Brickell, Julia L., und Peter J. Pizzi. 2015. Towards a synthesis of judicial perspectives on technology-assisted review. Defense Counsel Journal 82(3):309–320.
Burrell, Jenna. 2016. How the machine ‚thinks‘. Understanding opacity in machine learning algorithms. Big Data & Society 3(1):2053951715622512. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2660674.
Cole, Simon. 2001. Suspect identities. A history of fingerprinting and criminal identification. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.
Corbett-Davies, Sam, Emma Pierson, Avi Feller, und Sharad Goel. 2016. A computer program used for bail and sentencing decisions was labeled biased against blacks. It’s actually not that clear. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/10/17/can-an-algorithm-be-racist-our-analysis-is-more-cautious-than-propublicas. Zugegriffen: 21. Mai 2017.
Deleuze, Gilles, und Felix Guattari. 1992. Tausend Plateaus. Kapitalismus und Schizophrenie. Berlin: Merve.
Durkheim, Émile. 1986. Über die Teilung der sozialen Arbeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Egbert, Simon. 2017. Siegeszug der Algorithmen? Predictive Policing im deutschsprachigen Raum. http://www.bpb.de/apuz/253603/siegeszug-der-algorithmen-predictive-policing-im-deutschsprachigen-raum. Zugegriffen: 30. Okt. 2017.
Ehrlich, Eugen. 1936. Fundamental Principles of the Sociology of Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Eidenmüller, Horst. 1998. Effizienz als Rechtsprinzip. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.
Ewald, Francois. 1990. Norms, Discipline, and the Law. Representations 30:138–161.
Flores, Antony W., Kristin Bechtel, und Christopher T. Lowenkamp. 2016. False positives, false negatives, and false analyses. A rejoinder to machine bias. There’s software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it’s biased against blacks. Federal Probation 80(2):38–46.
Foucault, Michel. 1981. Archäologie des Wissens. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Foucault, Michel. 2015. Sicherheit, Territorium, Bevölkerung. Geschichte der Gouvernementalität I. Vorlesungen am Collège de France 1977/1978. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Garfinkel, Harold. 1984. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall.
Gieryn, Thomas F. 1999. Cultural boundaries of science. Credibility on the line. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1992. Faktizität und Geltung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Harcourt, Bernard E. 2015. Risk as a proxy for race. The dangers of risk assessment. Federal Sentencing Reporter 27(4):237–243.
Henderson, Howard, und Holly A. Miller. 2013. The (twice) failure of the wisconsin risk need assessment in a sample of probationers. Criminal Justice Policy Review 24(2):199–221.
Hilgartner, Steven. 2000. Science on stage: expert advice as public drama. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.
Hoc, Jean-Michel. 2010. From human-machine-interaction to human-machine-cooperation. Ergonomics 43(7):833–843.
Introna, Lucas, und David Wood. 2002. Picturing algorithmic surveillance. The politics of facial recognition systems. Surveillance & Society 2(2):3. http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/3373.
Irwin, Alan, und Mike Michael. 2003. Ethno-epistemic assemblages. heterogeneity and relationality in scientific citizenship. In Science, social theory and public knowledge, Hrsg. Alan Irwin, Mike Michael, 111–136. Berkshire, Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 1997. Science at the bar: law, science, and technology in america. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reprint edition.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2001. Ordering life: law and the normalization of biotechnology. Politeia 17(2):34–50.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2004. States of knowledge. The co-production of science and the social order. London: Routledge.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2005. Law’s knowledge: science for justice in legal settings. American Journal of Public Health 95(S 1):49–58.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2008. Making order. Law and science in action. In The handbook of science and technology studies, 3. Aufl., Hrsg. Edward J. Hackett, Olga Amsterdamska, Michael Lynch, und Judy Wajcman, 761–786. Cambridge, London: MIT Press.
Kelsen, Hans. 1960. Reine Rechtslehre. Mit einem Anhang. Das Problem der Gerechtigkeit, 2. Aufl., Wien: Franz Deuticke.
Kleinberg, Jon, Sendhil Mullainathan, und Manish Raghavan. 2016. Inherent Trade-Offs in the Fair Determination of Risk Scores. ArXiv: 1609.05807.
Larson, Jeff, Julia Angwin, und Terry Parris. 2016a. Breaking the black box. How machines learn to be racist. https://www.propublica.org/article/breaking-the-black-box-how-machines-learn-to-be-racist. Zugegriffen: 19. Okt. 2016.
Larson, J., S. Mattu, L. Kirchner, und J. Angwin. 2016b. How we analyzed the COMPAS recidivism algorithm. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-we-analyzed-the-compas-recidivism-algorithm. Zugegriffen: 3. Aug. 2018.
Latour, Bruno. 1990. Technology is society made durable. The Sociological Review 38(S 1):103–131.
Latour, Bruno. 2002. La Fabrique du droit. Une ethnographie du Conseil d’État. Paris: La Découverte.
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Latour, Bruno. 2014. Existenzweisen: Eine Anthropologie der Modernen. Berlin: Suhrkamp.
Legal Information Institute. 2011. 18 U.S. Code § 3553—Imposition of a sentence. In: U.S. Code. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/3553. Zugegriffen: 13. März 2015.
Lessig, Lawrence. 1999. Code: and other laws of cyberspace. New York: Basic Books.
Lessig, Lawrence. 2006. Code: Version 2.0. New York: Basic Books.
Llewellyn, Karl. 1931. Some realism about realism. Responding to dean pound. Harvard Law Review 44:1222–1256.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1983. Legitimation durch Verfahren, 10. Aufl., Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1987. Soziale Systeme: Grundriß einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Luhmann, Niklas. 1995. Das Recht der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Lynch, Michael. 2013. Science, truth, and forensic cultures: the exceptional legal status of DNA evidence. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44(1):60–70.
Marcus, George E. 1995. Technoscientific Imaginaries. Conversations, profiles, and memoirs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Mnookin, Jennifer L. 2001. Fingerprinting evidence in an age of DNA profiling. Brooklyn Law Review 67(1):13–70.
Musik, Christoph. 2011. The thinking eye is only half the story. High-level semantic video surveillance. Information Polity 16(4):339–353.
Nissan, Ephraim. 2017. Digital technologies and artificial intelligence’s present and foreseeable impact on lawyering, judging, policing and law enforcement. AI & Society 32(3):441–464.
Northpointe. 2012. COMPAS risk & need assessment system. Selected questions posed by inquiring agencies. http://www.northpointeinc.com/files/downloads/FAQ_Document.pdf. Zugegriffen: 1. Aug. 2018.
Pasquale, Frank. 2015. The black box society: the secret algorithms that control money and information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Perry, Walter L., Brian McInnis, Carter C. Price, Susan C. Smith, und John S. Hollywood. 2013. Predictive policing. The role of crime forecasting in law enforcement operations. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation.
Rawls, Anne W. 2012. Durkheim’s theory of modernity. Self-regulating practices as constitutive orders of social and moral facts. Journal of Classical Sociology 12(3–4):479–512. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468795X12454476.
Ruhl, J.B., und Daniel M. Katz. 2015. Measuring, monitoring, and managing legal complexity. Iowa Law Review 101:191.
Schild, Uri J., und John Zeleznikow. 2008. Comparing sentencing decision support systems for judges and lawyers. Journal of Decision Systems 17(4):523–552.
Shapiro, Aaron. 2017. Reform predictive policing. Nature News 541(7638):458.
Skeem, Jennifer L., und Christopher Lowenkamp. 2016. Risk, race, & recidivism. Predictive bias and disparate impact. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2687339. Zugegriffen: 13. Mai 2018.
State Court Administrative Office. 2016. Presentence Investigation Report. In: Manual for District Court Probation Officers, 41–86. http://courts.mi.gov/Administration/SCAO/Resources/Documents/Publications/Manuals/prbofc/prb.pdf. Zugegriffen: 25. Mai 2017.
Steffensmeier, Darrell, Jeffrey Ulmer, und John Kramer. 1998. The interaction of race, gender, and age in criminal sentencing: The punishment cost of being young, Black, and male. Criminology 36(4):763–797.
Subramanian, Ram, Rebecka Moreno, und Sharyn Broomhead. 2014. Recalibrating Justice. A Review of 2013 State Sentencing and Corrections Trends. New York: Vera Institute of Justice. http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/state-sentencing-and-corrections-trends-2013.pdf. Zugegriffen: 22.03.2019.
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern social imaginaries. Duke University Press: Durham, London.
Vismann, Cornelia. 2011. Medien der Rechtsprechung. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer.
Wulf, Christoph. 2003. Ritual und Recht. Performatives Handeln und mimetisches Wissen. In Körper und Recht. Anthropologische Dimensionen der Rechtsphilosophie, Hrsg. Ludger Schwarte, Christoph Wulf, 29–45. München: Wilhelm Fink.
Yates, Christopher P., und Louise E. Herrick. 2001. Going on record: the perils of discussing criminal history during the presentence interview. Federal Sentencing Reporter 13:330–332.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Müller, P., Pöchhacker, N. Algorithmic Risk Assessment als Medium des Rechts. Österreich Z Soziol 44 (Suppl 1), 157–179 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-019-00352-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11614-019-00352-5