Lauren Kirchner

Lauren Kirchner is a senior reporting fellow at ProPublica.

News

Prisons & Policing

Federal Judge Unseals New York Crime Lab’s Software for Analyzing DNA Evidence

Flaws in the software's design may have resulted in innocent people going to prison.

By: Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

October 22, 2017

Interview

Prisons & Policing

Putting Crime Scene DNA Analysis on Trial

Concerns are prompting a national study on crime scene DNA analysis methods.

By: Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

October 14, 2017

News

DNA Dragnet: In Some Cities, Police Go From Stop-and-Frisk to Stop-and-Spit

Florida police are building private DNA databases, collecting samples from people not charged with or even suspected of anything.

By: Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

September 13, 2016

News

The Senate’s Popular Sentencing Reform Bill Would Sort Prisoners by “Risk Score“

Federal prisoners would be scored according to their risk of recidivating. Those who got high scores would be ineligible for sentence reduction.

By: Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

June 21, 2016

News

Software Used to Predict Criminality Is Biased Against Black People

Sade Jones, who had never been arrested before, was rated a medium risk.

By: Julia Angwin ,; Jeff Larson ,; Lauren Kirchner ,; Surya Mattu ,; ProPublica

May 26, 2016

News

What’s the Evidence Mass Surveillance Works? Not Much

Officials are again pointing to the need for mass surveillance to take down terrorists. Here's what we know about how well it works.

By: Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

November 20, 2015

News

When Big Data Becomes Bad Data

Corporations are increasingly relying on algorithms to make business decisions and that raises new legal questions.

By: Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

September 6, 2015

News Analysis

California’s Drought Is Part of a Much Bigger Water Crisis – Here’s What You Need to Know

Why do I keep hearing about the California drought, if it's the Colorado River that we're "killing"?

By: Abrahm Lustgarten ,; Amanda Zamora ,; Lauren Kirchner ,; ProPublica

July 4, 2015

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50 Percent of Trans Youth in Danger of Losing Access to Gender-Affirming Care

WI Supreme Court Candidate Defends Campaigning With “Stop the Steal” Organizer

AOC Slams GOP for Banning Children’s Book “Life of Rosa Parks” for Being “Woke”

Trump Preemptively Blames Manhattan DA for His Own Loyalists’ Violent Protests

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Lauren Kirchner

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