Fair Profiling

Staddon, John ER

Abstract

There are several strategies available to police “stopping” suspects. Most efficient is to stop only members of the group with the highest a priori probability of guilt; least efficient is indiscriminate stopping. An efficient option that satisfies one criterion for fairness is a strategy that matches stop probability to risk probability. But a strategy that chooses stop probabilities so that the absolute number of innocents stopped is equal for all groups is close to maximally efficient and seems fair by almost any criterion.

Type

Journal article

Subject

Profiling
Police

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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2883

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Scholars@Duke

John E. R. Staddon

James B. Duke Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Neuroscience

Until my retirement in 2007, my laboratory did experimental research on learning and adaptive behavior, mostly with animals: pigeons, rats, fish, parakeets. We were particularly interested in timing and memory, feeding regulation, habituation and the ways in which pigeons and rats adapt to reward schedules. The aim is to arrive at simple models for learning that can help to identify the underlying neural mechanisms. I continue to do theoretical and historical work on the power law in

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