> In 2021, The Markup published an investigation in partnership with Gizmodo showing that Geolitica’s software tended to disproportionately target low-income, Black, and Latino neighborhoods in 38 cities across the country.
But you should understand what is meant by "disproportionately" in this context. It does not appear to mean "disproportionate to the amount of crime in those areas." It seems, as with most accusations of disparate impact, to mean just quite literally that more crimes are predicted in those neighborhoods without reference to disparities in crime rates.
They then imply (without direct reference to the enormous offending disparities) that this is explained by race and class differences in crime reporting: [0]
> The agency has found repeatedly that White crime victims are less likely to report violent crime to police than Black or Latino victims.
> In a special report looking at five years of data, BJS found an income pattern as well. People earning $50,000 or more a year reported crimes to the police 12 percent less often than those earning $25,000 a year or less.
> This disparity in crime reporting would naturally be reflected in predictions.
It's possible this is having some effect, but, again, because there is no reference to the (often very large) baseline differences in crime rates, we can't see what's true, which is that this probably accounts for only a small amount of that difference.
[0] https://themarkup.org/prediction-bias/2021/12/02/crime-predi...