Modelling recidivism with binary models and machine learning

Abstract

The article, reviewing previous study on recidivism prediction model, modeling the bina-ry outcome of recidivism with linear regression model, probit regression model and lo-gistic regression model. The application of machine learning techniques support vector machine (SVM) aids to compare the prediction result of each model and the relationships between recidivism probability and several personal characteristics have been identified. The prediction performances of models are similar with logistic regression model being the most parsimonious one and SVM method is tested to be not significantly superior in terms of prediction compared with traditional statistical models.