Race-blind charging

We developed a generative artificial intelligence algorithm that automatically redacts race-related information from police reports, allowing prosecutors reviewing these redacted documents to make race-blind charging decisions.

After two successful feasibility pilots in prosecutors’ offices, legislators in California unanimously passed a law requiring all prosecutors in the state to adopt race-blind charging by the beginning of 2025.

We worked with three major software vendors to integrate our algorithm directly into their case management systems. Several offices in the state, including Los Angeles County—the largest in the country—also independently adopted our solution. Now over 30 prosecutors’ offices across the country are using our algorithm for free, redacting thousands of reports every day.

Race-blind charging represents one of the first applications of generative AI in the criminal legal system. We are working with prosecutors to help them evaluate the impact of this new intervention via a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard for policy evaluation.

Learn more at blindcharging.org and in our peer-reviewed paper, “Blind justice: Algorithmically masking race in charging decisions.”

A hypothetical example of our redaction algorithm obscuring information that could be used to guess an individual’s race.

Voices from the field

“Now we have a case file where we don’t know what the person looks like… literally forcing justice to be blind.”
– Melesa Johnson, Jackson County Prosecutor, Kansas City, MO

“[Blind charging] is how trust and relationships are built between a district attorney’s office and the community that it serves.”
– Tessa Smith, Chair, Yolo County Multi-Cultural Community Council

“We [can] ensure that our decisions… are not infected by any real or perceived bias.”
– Jeff Reisig, Yolo County District Attorney, Woodland, CA