A Computational Decision-Tree Approach to Inform Post-Conviction Intake Decisions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
How might data analytic tools support intake decisions? When faced with a request for post-conviction assistance, innocence organizations’ intake staff must determine (1) whether the applicant can be shown to be factually innocent, and (2) whether the organization has the resources to help. These difficult categorization decisions are often made with incomplete information (Weintraub, 2022). We explore data from the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE; 4/26/2023, N = 3,284 exonerations) to inform such decisions, using patterns of features associated with successful prior cases. We first reproduce Berube et al. (2023)’s latent class analysis, identifying four underlying categories across cases. We then apply a second technique to increase transparency, decision tree analysis (WEKA, Frank et al., 2013). Decision trees can decompose complex patterns of data into ordered flows of variables, with the potential to guide intermediate steps that could be tailored to the particular organization’s limitations, areas of expertise, and resources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.051 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".