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arXiv · 2505.09868

Which Demographic Features Are Relevant for Individual Fairness Evaluation of U.S. Recidivism Risk Assessment Tools?

Tin Trung Nguyen·Jiannan Xu·Phuong-Anh Nguyen-Le·Jonathan Lazar·Donald Braman·Hal Daumé III·Zubin Jelveh
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Abstract

Despite its constitutional relevance, the technical ``individual fairness'' criterion has not been operationalized in U.S. state or federal statutes/regulations. We conduct a human subjects experiment to address this gap, evaluating which demographic features are relevant for individual fairness evaluation of recidivism risk assessment (RRA) tools. Our analyses conclude that the individual similarity function should consider age and sex, but it should ignore race.

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Tin Trung Nguyen, Jiannan Xu, Phuong-Anh Nguyen-Le, Jonathan Lazar, Donald Braman, Hal Daumé III, Zubin Jelveh. 2025-05-15. Which Demographic Features Are Relevant for Individual Fairness Evaluation of U.S. Recidivism Risk Assessment Tools?. https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.09868

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