BiasCritical
Fatalities Reportedly Occur Despite VioGén Algorithm's Low or Negligible Risk Scores
- Occurred
- Jul 18, 2024
- Published
- Jul 18, 2024
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
The VioGén algorithm was designed to help Spanish police assess and prioritize the risk of repeat domestic violence incidents. However, its low-risk assessment of Lobna Hemid reportedly led to inadequate protection; her husband murdered her. Since 2007, 247 women have been killed after being assessed by VioGén. A review of 98 homicides found that 55 of the slain women were scored as negligible or low risk.
Developers
- VioGén algorithm development team
- Spanish law enforcement agencies
- Spanish Interior Ministry
- Government of Spain
Deployers
- Spanish law enforcement agencies
- Spanish Interior Ministry
- Government of Spain
- Law enforcement
Harmed parties
- Women and girls
- Women
- Victims of domestic abuse
- Stefany González Escarraman
- María
- Luz
- Lobna Hemid
- General public of Spain
- General public
- Eva Jaular
- 247 women in Spain (unnamed)
Classification
Category confidence: 85%
Severity confidence: 95%
Rationale: Algorithm failures led to 247 domestic violence fatalities due to risk assessment errors.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8