An Open Source Replication of a Winning Recidivism Prediction Model.

We present results of our winning solution to the National Institute of Justice recidivism forecasting challenge. Our team, "MCHawks," placed highly in both terms of accuracy (as measured via the Brier score), as well as the fairness criteria (weighted by differences in false positive rates between White and Black parolees). We used a non-linear machine learning model, XGBoost, although we detail our search of different model specifications, as many different models' predictive performance is very similar.

Distance to trauma centres among gunshot wound victims: identifying trauma 'deserts' and 'oases' in Detroit.

Introduction: Among the factors related to survival among individuals with gun shot wounds (GSW) is distance to trauma care. Relatively little is known about neighbourhood-level patterns of GSW mortality and distance to hospitals with trauma centres. This study focuses on distance to the nearest trauma centre as a correlate of survival among GSW victims.