Often, yes. Because the statistics themselves can be distorted. For example, consider any of the openly racist police forces in the Jim Crow south. Any naive system based on their data would mirror the racism of their practices.
And that's ignoring more complicated feedback loops. Since colonial times, American whites have often used their dominance to keep black people impoverished. [1] Poverty and crime are correlated. Wealth is correlated with getting away with crime. So if a system looks at crime statistics without considering at the history, it would be easy to perpetuate the ugly parts of that history.
[1] See Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" for the colonial-era laws and practices, and Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for the Nadir up through suburbanization.
And that's ignoring more complicated feedback loops. Since colonial times, American whites have often used their dominance to keep black people impoverished. [1] Poverty and crime are correlated. Wealth is correlated with getting away with crime. So if a system looks at crime statistics without considering at the history, it would be easy to perpetuate the ugly parts of that history.
[1] See Kendi's "Stamped from the Beginning" for the colonial-era laws and practices, and Loewen's "Sundown Towns" for the Nadir up through suburbanization.