This week we had to do a presentation on the paper 'Bailing and Jailing the Fast and Frugal Way' by M. K. Dhami & P. Ayton (2001). The paper looked at some of the methods magistrates and judges can use for decision making and how effective they are. Dhami and Ayton focused on the fast and frugal model, and compared it to other models. The fast and frugal model method uses one cue for decision making. The fast and frugal model was found to be better at predicting simulated judgements on cases compared to other models such as the compensatory integration models.
Although it has been found to be an effective decision making method, it would be frowned upon if people knew that migistrates were judging people based on one piece of information, and not considering the other pieces of information available. The main cues/factors that magistrates can base a judegment on are; race; gender; and age. Even though magitrates say they are using all of the information provided to make their decision, most of the time those three cues are used to make their decisions, so are using the fast and frugal modal in some way, because those three cues carry a lot of weight in magistrates' decision making.
The fast and frugal method has been claimed to be effective for two-option city size judgments, because it predicts quite well which of two cities will have the larger population. However, with regard to the magistrates' decisions it's effective in predicting the magistrates' decisions. However, can we say that it's effective in terms of "accuracy"... i.e. in bailing the low-risk defendants and jailing the high-risk defendants?
ReplyDeleteThe fast and frugal method may not be accurate when it comes to predicting 'low risk' and high risk' defendants, because it may take more than one piece of information to analyse whether defendants are likely to re-offend. Which means, the fast and frugal method might over-look that aspect of accuracy. More information about the person may be needed to assess whether they are a high-risk or low-risk offender.
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