• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes

Status
Not open for further replies.
C

crimsonheadGCN

Banned
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At the request of his probation officer, Tyrone C. Brown came to a community auditorium here in June and sat alongside about 30 other mostly young black men with criminal records — men who were being watched closely by the police, just as he was.

He expected to hear an admonition from law enforcement officials to help end violence in the community. But Mr. Brown, 29, got more than he had bargained for. A police captain presented a slide show featuring mug shots of people they were cracking down on. Up popped a picture of Mr. Brown linking him to a criminal group that had been implicated in a homicide.

“I was disturbed,” said Mr. Brown, who acknowledges having been involved in crime but denied that he had ever been involved in a killing.

That discomfort was just the reaction the authorities were after.

Mr. Brown, whose criminal record includes drug and assault charges, is at the center of an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one in which the authorities have turned to complex computer algorithms to try to pinpoint the people most likely to be involved in future violent crimes — as either predator or prey. The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening.
Click to expand...

There's more here: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/u...st-likely-to-commit-crimes.html?smid=tw-share

And Shuan King (#BlackLivesMatter activist) wrote about it back in July and brought up a good question:

I only have one question, and of course it's rhetorical, and we all know the answer: does this system account for widespread racism in policing? If the data that HunchLab is given by the NYPD and the Miami police department to predict future crimes is skewed by wrongful arrests and illegal detentions, which, accounting for the reality that racism in policing has never been properly detailed on any massive scale, then we can reasonably ensure that the predictive policing technology will simply predict more racist police interventions. This is wrong and unethical on a hundred different levels.

How will it account for the reality that this NYPD detective testified under oath that he and others fabricated charges against innocent people to meet quotas? Will it account for the racist reality than in some places far more white people that are pulled over by police are found with drugs and contraband, but a higher percentage of African Americans end up arrested by those same police? If the data the system uses is based on arrests, which it likely does, and not the presence of drugs that should in fact warrant an arrest, we can already determine that this system will do nothing but advance more racist policing.

Will it count arrests like that of Kalief Browder, in which he spent three years in prison and was then released without ever being charged with a crime? Will it account for incidents like what we saw in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a 53-year-old white security guard with illegal marijuana in his bag shot an unarmed young man in his own neighborhood, but wasn't arrested for the shooting or the marijuana?
Click to expand...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...-The-Avengers-comes-to-New-York-City-for-real

I would hope that this is something that would be addressed, but I doubt it will be.
 
G

GhostWriter24

Member
Precog?

precog.jpg
Click to expand...
 
X

x24hrs2livex

Banned
I remember watching Minority report when I was in High School and thinking I'd be dead before that ever happen. Looks like I was wrong.
 
K

kirblar

Member
crimsonheadGCN said:
I would hope that this is something that would be addressed, but I doubt it will be.
Click to expand...
IIRC, this actually helps reduce the effect of racism, if this is the same program I read about earlier this year in regards to bail sentences and such.

edit: it is not, this is something very different.
 
M

Mushroomer25

Member
King makes a pretty hard-to-deny point. If this is based on past arrests as data points, it's inherently continuing practices that have proven to be racially imbalanced. Theoretically, this is a smart way to tackle the problem of crime. But it requires perfect data of crime statistics to properly enforce, which we currently don't have.
 
B

braves01

Banned
Efficient stat-based allocation of limited police resources is probably a good thing, especially for areas protected by PDs on a tight budget.
 
G

GrotesqueBeauty

Banned
Doubleplus good! Not sure why this would concern anyone, you've got nothing to worry about as long as you don't exhibit any aberrant behavior patterns, comrades.
 
C

Calabi

Member
GhostWriter24 said:
Precog?
Click to expand...

We've already got this in the UK. Not psychics, computers which predict where possible crimes may be.

They supposedly caught a burglar using it. Machine told them to be at a certain place and time and they caught someone trying to break and enter.

It's not really rocket science, people are pretty predictable.
 
K

kirblar

Member
The article mentions that different jurisdictions are experimenting with different algorithms and uses for them. They're not necessarily a bad thing- this Bail algorithm seems much better than people, for instance: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1071101

But not all of these are equal- this one seems much more problematic because of how subjective it is compared to the Bail one.
 
A

Aselith

Member
How are they are identifying the prey? Surely, they wouldn't be watching people who have done nothing wrong? We have nothing to worry about!
 
M

Massive Duck. C.M.

Banned
If the goal is to reduce the number of crimes at the expense of arresting more innocent people and harassing people in certain groups more frequently, then sure why not
 
G

Guevara

Member
This is probably the future of law enforcement, the real gain is they can promise to do more with fewer cops.

San Francisco's Police Department, for example, has been chronically understaffed for many years. We're supposed to have about 2,000 officers, but are about 300 short. It's going to be really tempting to suggest an algorithm can make up for these missing people (and their pensions).
 
A

Aselith

Member
Guevara said:
This is probably the future of law enforcement, the real gain is they can promise to do more with fewer cops.

San Francisco's Police Department, for example, has been chronically understaffed for many years. We're supposed to have about 2,000 officers, but are about 300 short. It's going to be really tempting to suggest an algorithm can make up for these missing people (and their pensions).
Click to expand...

I don't see how that is going to make policing easier for fewer officers if you are now out chasing down computer leads just in case in addition to responding to calls? I mean great the computer spat out a name, are you going to call the person up and say don't kill that dude or how would one respond to that? You can't arrest someone because you think they are going to commit a crime (yet)

And if the crime has already happened, it gives you a place to start looking but you still have to collect evidence and prove it
 
E

Epcott

Member
So a mix of Psycho Pass, Minority Report, and a dash of good ole profiling for that deep, robust taste?

ZoronMaro said:
Psycho-Pass
Basically Minority Report combined with a "takes a thief to catch a thief" premise. Now that I think on it, no minorities in that show, huh.
Click to expand...

Beaten like a future fellon
 
G

Guevara

Member
Aselith said:
I don't see how that is going to make policing easier for fewer officers if you are now out chasing down computer leads just in case in addition to responding to calls? I mean great the computer spat out a name, are you going to call the person up and say don't kill that dude or how would one respond to that? You can't arrest someone because you think they are going to commit a crime (yet)

And if the crime has already happened, it gives you a place to start looking but you still have to collect evidence and prove it
Click to expand...

That's the thing, these "call-ins" are meant to prevent crime by basically warning people ahead of time: the police are watching you.

They also could be used to give stiffer sentences to the watch-list for even minor crimes. Neither really requires cops to go out in the field more often.
 
M

Mimosa97

Member
In the name of safety above everything we're really going to burn our civilization to the ground, aren't we ?

I swear I don't even want to think about what society will look like in 25 years.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

Cartel launch drone attack on Mexico police station
2
60
3K
Airbus Jr replied
We Own This City | Limited Series | Mondays at 21:00 on HBO Max
16
2K
BadBurger replied
The man who owes Nintendo $14m: Gary Bowser and gaming’s most infamous piracy case
2
85
5K
SHA replied
Phil Spencer interview - Says that their intent is for all Xbox games, including Call of Duty, to be available on Xbox Game Pass Day One
2 3
102
6K
Kenneth Haight replied
Starfield Q&A on Discord Details
15
2K
balls of snow replied
Top Bottom