Researching how artificial intelligence learns to see race in the American courtroom.

About

Dr. Earnest J. Ujaama is an interdisciplinary researcher, consultant, and educator working across criminal justice, forensic psychology, law, and artificial intelligence. His current research examines the human, institutional, and sociotechnical factors that may contribute to bias in AI-assisted criminal justice decision-making — particularly in sentencing and pretrial release.

He holds a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Walden University and is completing a second Ph.D. in Forensic Psychology, with an approved dissertation proposal grounded in Critical Race Theory and Algorithmic Justice Theory. His work draws on qualitative expert-interview methodology and reflexive thematic analysis to study how representation, design, and governance shape algorithmic outcomes.

Doctoral Research

Racial bias in AI criminal risk assessment

A qualitative study of how the underrepresentation of Black professionals in AI development may contribute to racial bias in the risk-assessment tools used across U.S. sentencing and pretrial decision-making.

• Stakeholder Understanding

  How AI-development and criminal-justice professionals understand the link between development-team representation and bias outcomes.

• Mechanisms of Bias

  The human, institutional, and sociotechnical pathways through which bias enters, persists, and is reinforced in AI-assisted systems.

• Theoretical Grounding

  Critical Race Theory and Algorithmic Justice Theory, applied to structural inequality, historical data, and technological design.

• Design & Governance

  Training-data selection, proxy variables, fairness metrics, team composition, corporate opacity, and governance structures.

• Method

  Semi-structured expert interviews across AI, criminal justice, forensic psychology, and law, analyzed through reflexive thematic analysis.

Selected Publications

Books & scholarship

Areas of Expertise

Research, policy, and technology