8 ms·

Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes

36 points by charrisku 11y ago

draugadrotten 11y ago
The picture illustrating the article seems to enforce racist stereotypes.
- louhike 11y ago
  It is a picture of a guy they are talking about in the article so I am not sure it is constructive to say it enforces racist stereotypes. It is not a lambda photography from Getty (or other) just used to fill some space.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
nsns 11y ago
This illusion of efficacy, with often detrimental results, is nothing new[0]; a fatal naivety which ignores human agency. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act
phkahler 11y ago
>> 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 Sounds like intimidation.
nobody_nowhere 11y ago
What could possibly go wrong?
microcolonel 11y ago
I figure this will look good and "tough on crime" to the people seeing the news, but intimidation and preemptive punishment will not give people the self confidence they need to make a success of themselves in polite society. Not to mention, I'm sure you can see how this is a breach of justice.
e12e 11y ago
"During an August call-in, the speakers told the men that this was their last chance. Tammy Dickinson, the United States attorney for the Western District of Missouri, related the story of a man in the program who was given a 15-year prison sentence for being caught with a bullet in his pocket." So, yet again software is the new force-multiplier? Strict (IMNHO crazy) sentencing guides, arguably designed for the purpose of reducing crime by being a deterrent, now leads to even more filling up of prisons due to targeted (ab)use against certain groups? On a side note, I wonder how these algorithms handle police brutality etc. I can just imagine sitting in such a meeting, and seeing a couple of police officers in full uniform popping up on that mugshot wall of shame...
fijal 11y ago
I'm a bit surprised noone brought up minority report. Philip K Dick living a good afterlife :-)
- madaxe_again 11y ago
  He's just asleep in the cold-pak, this is his nightmare in which we live. hoses self down with Ubik
- _nedR 11y ago
  I am more reminded about Psycho Pass (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/) a terrific anime tv series. It basically explores a future in which a person's criminal intent (called their crime coefficient) along with other mental attributes (collectively referred to as one's psycho pass) is judged by the Sibyl system - A system that works so well that it acts as judge, jury and executioner with little human input. It explores a lot of questions such as the role of free will and potential for change in such a world. Interestingly lot of people find it hard to lower their crime coefficients after it 'stabilizes' to a new high (Like how it becomes easier to commit a crime again after having done it once - the same judgement the police make in this article). Also like in this article, people who are victims of abuse and crime often find their crime coefficients inevitably rise. Don't let the cartoon characters fool you. IMO The complexity and depth of this series (and a lot of sci-fi anime) far surpasses the likes of minority report and hollywood sci-fi in general. My description really doesn't do it justice.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Yeah, its one of the best Anime I've seen in the psat 5 years or so. :)
  - Raphmedia 11y ago
    The scene where the "cops" have to arrest (or was it kill?) the victim of a rape because her crime coefficient increased was pretty harsh.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
fijal 11y ago
I'm a bit surprised noone brought up minority report. Philip K Dick living a good afterlife :-)
DanBC 11y ago
We can see what the results of this style of policing is when we look at juveniles. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/americas-prison-population http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/am... > This overreliance on imprisonment can be seen most starkly, and sadly, by looking at the juvenile population, which is just under 71,000 nationally. Around 11,600 are imprisoned for "technical violations" of their probation or parole terms, rather than because they committed a new crime. In 11 states such juvenile prisoners outnumber those in for crimes against other people. In only one state (Massachusetts) did juveniles imprisoned for crimes committed against people comprise a majority of juvenile prisoners. Around 3,000 are locked up for things that aren't crimes for adults, "such as running away, truancy and incorrigibility." Incarcerated children are less likely to graduate high-school and more likely to spend time in prison as adults. If America is interested in reducing its prison population, locking up fewer juveniles for silly reasons would be a good place to start.
e12e 11y ago
"(...) 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." Interesting (eerie) parallel to the intro in the TV series "Person of Interest", although supposedly this system doesn't get its data from the NSA (as with parallel construction etc), but rather the information comes from more-or-less open data (legal surveillance etc) -- and of course it isn't vigilantes but police that will, 'victim or perpetrator, if your number's up (...) find you': "You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered 'irrelevant'. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you".
mathgeek 11y ago
Seems to stand in rather stark contrast to a system designed to rehabilitate criminals.
pdkl95 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia Given the problems in police departments (which have fortunately started to appearing in the news), giving the police a system that will essentially let them see what you want to see is a terrible idea. Police work is already full of "forensic tools" that don't actually work (like idea that fingerprints actually identify someone uniquely, or the various techniques that are examples of the Birthday Paradox). While I'm sure that it's possible to use modern techniques to estimate where crime will occur, it won't work in practice. There are simply too many ways to bias the results (intentionally or not). I suspect giving police this kind of tool is simply a way to give legitimacy and cover to their bad behavior. > including information about friendships, social media activity COINTELPRO is a helluva drug. > advocates say predictive policing can help improve police-community relations by focusing on the people most likely to become involved in violent crime. That sounds suspiciously like an excuse to improve white communities, by focusing on the blacks (who have historically been seen as "violent savages" by racists). > because our predictive tool shows us you might commit a crime at some point in the future The big question is how long until someone tries to use that "predictive tool" as probable cause.
- Baghard 11y ago
  Apophenia is the _human_ tendency to see patterns in random _data_. Predictive _analytics_ is a machine that pulls non-random patterns out of data and presents this as _information_. To say that other tools have a bad track record may count as a valid argument, but to me, it is a weak and fatalistic one. Judge each tool on its own merit or discard all tools as useless seems like an easy choice. Predicting crime works in practice and theory. These models are not black boxes, they can be introspected. Bias can be detected and removed. COINTELPRO was a program to infiltrate and disturb organizations that the state viewed as unwelcome. Monitoring social media activity is common detective work. The modern equivalent of an officer peeking over the fence in your back garden to see a stolen motorbike. Now they can use Google Maps for that. This is public information: The criminals feel free and safe enough to post and brag about their crimes on Facebook. Removing or combating criminal elements in any community will improve that community, regardless of skin color. Black youth is helped, not suppressed, when gang recruiters are identified and punished. Predictive tools are already used as probable cause. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay can get a brain-wave reader test. This device will tell you what someone is thinking about and may reveal the plans of future terrorist attack.
jmnicolas 11y ago
"In Chicago, the police have developed a “heat list” of 400 people who are considered far more likely than the average person to be involved in violent crime. Factors in compiling that list included their criminal records, social circles and gang connections. Also a factor was whether they had been victims of an assault or a shooting." Yeah and I'm sure that Chicago detectives had absolutely no clue about those 400 people, they really needed a piece of expensive software to tell them where to look for. The trend is to think that technology will solve all problems, but it's just wishful thinking imho.
- mentat 11y ago
  Instead of protecting and helping victims, expect them to retaliate and be waiting when they do... Awesome.
  - riskneural 11y ago
    In the insurance industry, if you are the victim of a crash you may lose your no claims bonus. The situation is not just as simple as a victim of attack being a victim. Wouldn't it be the case that, for example, those in the drug business are far more likely to harm their competition than their market?
    - mentat 11y ago
      For what types of attacks is it OK to "take away the no claims bonus" for fair and equal protection (and scrutiny) by the law?
      - riskneural 11y ago
        If the goal is to prospectively keep the peace, then the monitoring should be directed towards those most likely to break the peace. I think that is rather orthogonal to fair and equal protection.
  - spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
    Exactly and as having been in the wrong place at the wrong time this rankles and I did have at the time dissuade my one of my coworkers from "accidentally" putting the perp on the kiddie fiddlers regsister. And the landlord of the pub where this happened was very lucky a few of the lads didn't go down and make our displeasure known.
mtgx 11y ago
How long until they just send armed drones automatically after them based on the software's algorithm? 10-20 years?
- mattlutze 11y ago
  Wasn't that the premise of the most recent Captain America movie? Use the computers to determine where threats were, then have the flying aircraft carriers eliminate those threats. We can't outsource our moral imperative to computers, no matter how much we don't want to have the conversation about actual causes of crime and incarceration in the US...
- krapp 11y ago
  Isn't this the sort of thing humans are supposed to be bad at but AI should be good at? An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear. It doesn't get tired, doesn't feel pain or pity or remorse. It would be able to impartially and accurately process vast amounts of data - far more than a human, and the actions of the drones could be completely auditable. Drones won't lie on the stand to protect their fellow drones, or tamper with evidence. You could walk down the street surrounded by police drones and be confident that you're not being profiled based on racist or religious bigotry, but pure mathematics and statistics. In every conceivable way, an armed drone with a license to kill is safer, faster, more reliable than a human. One only has to look at the current justice system in any country to see that humans are simply not capable of properly judging the motives of, or punishing, other humans in any reasonable way. People will simply have to accept that the day will come when human-applied justice is viewed with the same ridicule and scorn that witch-burning is today... as the vicious, superstitious barbarism of an ignorant past.
  - smtddr 11y ago
    >>An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear An automated system is written by people and those prejudices can still sneak in... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-discriminate.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-dis... http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_mess/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_m...
openfuture 11y ago
This is incredible. Are people seriously ok with this?
jrochkind1 11y ago
PreCrime
sobkas 11y ago
Ah, the famous "Computer said so" ass cover. Because computer made that decision, no one can be held responsible for it.
forgotmysn 11y ago
Pro tip: it's the police.
Wonderdonkey 11y ago
I started reading this hopefully. I liked the idea that seemed to be developing at first — reaching out to people before crimes are committed, potentially saving a human being from a life in prison (not to mention saving any potential victims). Instead, it developed into a story of what amounts to pre-meditated blind rage against any and all associated with a given criminal. This isn't new. And it's exactly what we don't need more of.
jellicle 11y ago
Step 1: Discriminatory policing against disliked groups. Step 2: Run the results of that through the computer. Step 3: The unbiased computer tells me that disliked groups are more likely to be charged with crimes! That justifies my discrimination! I knew they were up to no good! And it's not me, the COMPUTER says it!
knd775 11y ago
There was a Captain America movie about this sort of thing.
swframe 11y ago
There is a thisamericanlife show (Crime Pays) about cops paying kids to give up (or avoid) a life of crime. It is quite amazing how little it takes to prevent someone from costing society $40K a year in jail. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind?act=2 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/555/t...
- confluence 11y ago
  End of the day, it's cheaper to pay people to do nothing, than it is to lock them up when they become desperate and commit crimes.
alecco 11y ago
This should be handled by something like social services, not police. Prevention is not their game.

36 points by charrisku 11y ago

draugadrotten 11y ago

The picture illustrating the article seems to enforce racist stereotypes.

louhike 11y ago
It is a picture of a guy they are talking about in the article so I am not sure it is constructive to say it enforces racist stereotypes. It is not a lambda photography from Getty (or other) just used to fill some space.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

nsns 11y ago

This illusion of efficacy, with often detrimental results, is nothing new[0]; a fatal naivety which ignores human agency. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Tribes_Act

phkahler 11y ago

>> 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 Sounds like intimidation.

nobody_nowhere 11y ago

What could possibly go wrong?

microcolonel 11y ago

I figure this will look good and "tough on crime" to the people seeing the news, but intimidation and preemptive punishment will not give people the self confidence they need to make a success of themselves in polite society. Not to mention, I'm sure you can see how this is a breach of justice.

e12e 11y ago

"During an August call-in, the speakers told the men that this was their last chance. Tammy Dickinson, the United States attorney for the Western District of Missouri, related the story of a man in the program who was given a 15-year prison sentence for being caught with a bullet in his pocket." So, yet again software is the new force-multiplier? Strict (IMNHO crazy) sentencing guides, arguably designed for the purpose of reducing crime by being a deterrent, now leads to even more filling up of prisons due to targeted (ab)use against certain groups? On a side note, I wonder how these algorithms handle police brutality etc. I can just imagine sitting in such a meeting, and seeing a couple of police officers in full uniform popping up on that mugshot wall of shame...

fijal 11y ago

I'm a bit surprised noone brought up minority report. Philip K Dick living a good afterlife :-)

madaxe_again 11y ago
He's just asleep in the cold-pak, this is his nightmare in which we live. hoses self down with Ubik
_nedR 11y ago
I am more reminded about Psycho Pass (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2379308/) a terrific anime tv series. It basically explores a future in which a person's criminal intent (called their crime coefficient) along with other mental attributes (collectively referred to as one's psycho pass) is judged by the Sibyl system - A system that works so well that it acts as judge, jury and executioner with little human input. It explores a lot of questions such as the role of free will and potential for change in such a world. Interestingly lot of people find it hard to lower their crime coefficients after it 'stabilizes' to a new high (Like how it becomes easier to commit a crime again after having done it once - the same judgement the police make in this article). Also like in this article, people who are victims of abuse and crime often find their crime coefficients inevitably rise. Don't let the cartoon characters fool you. IMO The complexity and depth of this series (and a lot of sci-fi anime) far surpasses the likes of minority report and hollywood sci-fi in general. My description really doesn't do it justice.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Yeah, its one of the best Anime I've seen in the psat 5 years or so. :)
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  The scene where the "cops" have to arrest (or was it kill?) the victim of a rape because her crime coefficient increased was pretty harsh.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

fijal 11y ago

I'm a bit surprised noone brought up minority report. Philip K Dick living a good afterlife :-)

DanBC 11y ago

We can see what the results of this style of policing is when we look at juveniles. http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/americas-prison-population http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/am... > This overreliance on imprisonment can be seen most starkly, and sadly, by looking at the juvenile population, which is just under 71,000 nationally. Around 11,600 are imprisoned for "technical violations" of their probation or parole terms, rather than because they committed a new crime. In 11 states such juvenile prisoners outnumber those in for crimes against other people. In only one state (Massachusetts) did juveniles imprisoned for crimes committed against people comprise a majority of juvenile prisoners. Around 3,000 are locked up for things that aren't crimes for adults, "such as running away, truancy and incorrigibility." Incarcerated children are less likely to graduate high-school and more likely to spend time in prison as adults. If America is interested in reducing its prison population, locking up fewer juveniles for silly reasons would be a good place to start.

e12e 11y ago

"(...) 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." Interesting (eerie) parallel to the intro in the TV series "Person of Interest", although supposedly this system doesn't get its data from the NSA (as with parallel construction etc), but rather the information comes from more-or-less open data (legal surveillance etc) -- and of course it isn't vigilantes but police that will, 'victim or perpetrator, if your number's up (...) find you': "You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know, because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people; people like you. Crimes the government considered 'irrelevant'. They wouldn't act, so I decided I would. But I needed a partner, someone with the skills to intervene. Hunted by the authorities, we work in secret. You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you".

mathgeek 11y ago

Seems to stand in rather stark contrast to a system designed to rehabilitate criminals.

pdkl95 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia Given the problems in police departments (which have fortunately started to appearing in the news), giving the police a system that will essentially let them see what you want to see is a terrible idea. Police work is already full of "forensic tools" that don't actually work (like idea that fingerprints actually identify someone uniquely, or the various techniques that are examples of the Birthday Paradox). While I'm sure that it's possible to use modern techniques to estimate where crime will occur, it won't work in practice. There are simply too many ways to bias the results (intentionally or not). I suspect giving police this kind of tool is simply a way to give legitimacy and cover to their bad behavior. > including information about friendships, social media activity COINTELPRO is a helluva drug. > advocates say predictive policing can help improve police-community relations by focusing on the people most likely to become involved in violent crime. That sounds suspiciously like an excuse to improve white communities, by focusing on the blacks (who have historically been seen as "violent savages" by racists). > because our predictive tool shows us you might commit a crime at some point in the future The big question is how long until someone tries to use that "predictive tool" as probable cause.

Baghard 11y ago
Apophenia is the _human_ tendency to see patterns in random _data_. Predictive _analytics_ is a machine that pulls non-random patterns out of data and presents this as _information_. To say that other tools have a bad track record may count as a valid argument, but to me, it is a weak and fatalistic one. Judge each tool on its own merit or discard all tools as useless seems like an easy choice. Predicting crime works in practice and theory. These models are not black boxes, they can be introspected. Bias can be detected and removed. COINTELPRO was a program to infiltrate and disturb organizations that the state viewed as unwelcome. Monitoring social media activity is common detective work. The modern equivalent of an officer peeking over the fence in your back garden to see a stolen motorbike. Now they can use Google Maps for that. This is public information: The criminals feel free and safe enough to post and brag about their crimes on Facebook. Removing or combating criminal elements in any community will improve that community, regardless of skin color. Black youth is helped, not suppressed, when gang recruiters are identified and punished. Predictive tools are already used as probable cause. Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay can get a brain-wave reader test. This device will tell you what someone is thinking about and may reveal the plans of future terrorist attack.

jmnicolas 11y ago

"In Chicago, the police have developed a “heat list” of 400 people who are considered far more likely than the average person to be involved in violent crime. Factors in compiling that list included their criminal records, social circles and gang connections. Also a factor was whether they had been victims of an assault or a shooting." Yeah and I'm sure that Chicago detectives had absolutely no clue about those 400 people, they really needed a piece of expensive software to tell them where to look for. The trend is to think that technology will solve all problems, but it's just wishful thinking imho.

mentat 11y ago
Instead of protecting and helping victims, expect them to retaliate and be waiting when they do... Awesome.
- riskneural 11y ago
  In the insurance industry, if you are the victim of a crash you may lose your no claims bonus. The situation is not just as simple as a victim of attack being a victim. Wouldn't it be the case that, for example, those in the drug business are far more likely to harm their competition than their market?
  - mentat 11y ago
    For what types of attacks is it OK to "take away the no claims bonus" for fair and equal protection (and scrutiny) by the law?
    - riskneural 11y ago
      If the goal is to prospectively keep the peace, then the monitoring should be directed towards those most likely to break the peace. I think that is rather orthogonal to fair and equal protection.
- spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
  Exactly and as having been in the wrong place at the wrong time this rankles and I did have at the time dissuade my one of my coworkers from "accidentally" putting the perp on the kiddie fiddlers regsister. And the landlord of the pub where this happened was very lucky a few of the lads didn't go down and make our displeasure known.

mtgx 11y ago

How long until they just send armed drones automatically after them based on the software's algorithm? 10-20 years?

mattlutze 11y ago
Wasn't that the premise of the most recent Captain America movie? Use the computers to determine where threats were, then have the flying aircraft carriers eliminate those threats. We can't outsource our moral imperative to computers, no matter how much we don't want to have the conversation about actual causes of crime and incarceration in the US...
krapp 11y ago
Isn't this the sort of thing humans are supposed to be bad at but AI should be good at? An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear. It doesn't get tired, doesn't feel pain or pity or remorse. It would be able to impartially and accurately process vast amounts of data - far more than a human, and the actions of the drones could be completely auditable. Drones won't lie on the stand to protect their fellow drones, or tamper with evidence. You could walk down the street surrounded by police drones and be confident that you're not being profiled based on racist or religious bigotry, but pure mathematics and statistics. In every conceivable way, an armed drone with a license to kill is safer, faster, more reliable than a human. One only has to look at the current justice system in any country to see that humans are simply not capable of properly judging the motives of, or punishing, other humans in any reasonable way. People will simply have to accept that the day will come when human-applied justice is viewed with the same ridicule and scorn that witch-burning is today... as the vicious, superstitious barbarism of an ignorant past.
- smtddr 11y ago
  >>An automated justice system wouldn't be biased by human prejudice, ignorance or fear An automated system is written by people and those prejudices can still sneak in... http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-discriminate.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-dis... http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_mess/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_m...

openfuture 11y ago

This is incredible. Are people seriously ok with this?

jrochkind1 11y ago

PreCrime

sobkas 11y ago

Ah, the famous "Computer said so" ass cover. Because computer made that decision, no one can be held responsible for it.

forgotmysn 11y ago

Pro tip: it's the police.

Wonderdonkey 11y ago

I started reading this hopefully. I liked the idea that seemed to be developing at first — reaching out to people before crimes are committed, potentially saving a human being from a life in prison (not to mention saving any potential victims). Instead, it developed into a story of what amounts to pre-meditated blind rage against any and all associated with a given criminal. This isn't new. And it's exactly what we don't need more of.

jellicle 11y ago

Step 1: Discriminatory policing against disliked groups. Step 2: Run the results of that through the computer. Step 3: The unbiased computer tells me that disliked groups are more likely to be charged with crimes! That justifies my discrimination! I knew they were up to no good! And it's not me, the COMPUTER says it!

knd775 11y ago

There was a Captain America movie about this sort of thing.

swframe 11y ago

There is a thisamericanlife show (Crime Pays) about cops paying kids to give up (or avoid) a life of crime. It is quite amazing how little it takes to prevent someone from costing society $40K a year in jail. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/555/the-incredible-rarity-of-changing-your-mind?act=2 http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/555/t...

confluence 11y ago
End of the day, it's cheaper to pay people to do nothing, than it is to lock them up when they become desperate and commit crimes.

alecco 11y ago

This should be handled by something like social services, not police. Prevention is not their game.