[neoburkian]

> think of the innocent immigrant

A model that does not incorporate all the relevant information will have more false positives. The practical consequence of doing what you suggest is, cetaris-paribus, that you will incorrectly penalize more people.

> There might be a correlation in aggregate data but in any individual case we can only look at the relevant facts.

Definitely. Thats where courts and human review come in. The mistake the Dutch made here was not the variables in the model, but that they had limited human review of a model with (I'm assuming) low predictive power.

> Our justice system is supposed to be “innocent until proven guilty”, not “innocent until Bayesian inference suggests high enough probability.”

"Guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" (or whatever the Dutch equivalent is) implies exactly the Bayesian calculation you are rejecting. That said, I agree that a machine learning model with limited inputs is not sufficient to determine guilt.