4 ms·

The Ticket Trap: Front to Back

47 points by danso 8y ago

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
"We decided against showing trends over time on ward pages because the overall trend in the number of tickets issued is too big and complex [...] it would have been outside the journalistic goals of highlighting systemic injustices."
- mlthoughts2018 8y ago
  It does feel like there is an element of cherry picking in the chosen data presentations. It invites believing “injustice” trends while obfuscating what the true multiple-comparisons adjustment for some type of significance or posterior credibility would be. The conclusion that tickets are enforced in a way that manifests injustice is probably broadly true, but the data presentation actually makes it quite hard to interpret what’s “real” and what might just be an artifact of cherry picking, not to mention what slices of the data could be exhibiting something like Simpson’s paradox, etc.
- arcticfox 8y ago
  I appreciate the goals of this project, but IMO they aren't being very rigorous about it, and really only arrive at the conclusion that "more blacks are poor, and tickets hit poor people very hard", which I think anyone would already agree with before this study. I don't really understand what the ward breakdown adds. "Which Ward Owes The Most?": right, poor people can't afford to pay tickets and build up debt. "Where People Are Ticketed Most": this seemed promising. I clicked and mostly majority-white neighborhoods popped to the top. This is explained away by saying they're more congested; OK, fair enough, but try to control for that by population density? Or something? How am I supposed to read "unfair to minorities" out of that? "How Ticket Type Varies By Ward": maybe there's something here, but this seems just as related to other factors to me as the previous point. From what I've seen in Chicago, the majority-black neighborhoods are vastly different than the majority-white neighborhoods (I feel like ProPublica would agree), so a difference in ticket type seems incredibly logical. Yet here it's not dismissed like they dismissed the previous category. "What Happens if You Don’t Pay": right, poor people can't afford to pay tickets and it ends in a property seizure or bankruptcy. "Who Appeals and Wins": sorting by "Percent contested and won" the minority neighborhoods fair very well, consisting of 5 of the top 8.
  - IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
    Perhaps to call out the politicians who could do something about the preying on the poorer areas?
_Codemonkeyism 8y ago
What made me wonder: Single developer setting up app with a bunch of microservices in the backend claiming low maintenance, would really be interested in an evaluation 2y in the future.
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
Microservices and using Make to wrap their chosen build tooling - I love it! This is similar to what my team does with a set of about 20 computer vision and NLP web services, in an environment with fairly high web traffic (Alexa top 300 site), with a large and distributed team of engineers. In our case several parts also involve Docker & CI such that common Makefiles are used by all parties and all config is externalized to the build and/or runtime environment. It has worked extremely well for many years now.
dstroot 8y ago
I have always enjoyed articles like this that clearly explain the problem they are trying to solve, why they are solving it, and how they are solving it all the way down to the tech stack (which is the most interesting bits along with UI design for me). Worth the read time.
- Chris_Chambers 8y ago
  This comment is useless.
everybodyknows 8y ago
Propublica list of data sets, some offering free download: https://www.propublica.org/datastore/datasets https://www.propublica.org/datastore/datasets
everybodyknows 8y ago
The project would smell sweeter if the top page of the app weren't hitting facebook.net -- https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/ https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/
Simulacra 8y ago
It’s interesting that Low income people are the ones disproportionally hit by the number of tickets, but I guess the question that needs answering is: are they in fact breaking the law? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a parking ticket for something I haven’t legitimately done wrong, they suck, but if you break the law you get a ticket. So I’m just curious is the map supposed to help us understand that the police are disproportionately ticketing in low income areas, and by that reasoning less in higher income areas ? Just trying to understand what’s the lesson we should take away from this. Should we forgive tickets to people who are low income?
- 4werfaw34r 8y ago
  I don't think that's what they are trying to say at all: https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/ https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/ Some of the insights they pull from this data: Most tickets are issues in majority-black wards, in places with high poverty rates. Motorists in these wards were found more at risk of losing a vehicle or declaring bankruptcy. Most tickets that are contested are in more well-to-do, majority-white wards, and contested tickets have more than a 50% chance of the driver being found not liable. Here's what I draw from this: Parking tickets frequently trap the poor into a cycle of debt. People who have money and free time have more resources available to challenge the ticket and not have to pay. That doesn't say to me "we should forgive tickets for low income residents" but it says to me we need to find other ways to enforce the parking laws that don't just make the poor even poorer.
  - c22 8y ago
    Tickets should be adjusted for income. If someone making $200,000 a year has to pay $50 for parking in the wrong place then someone who makes $20,000 should have to pay $5.

47 points by danso 8y ago

"We decided against showing trends over time on ward pages because the overall trend in the number of tickets issued is too big and complex [...] it would have been outside the journalistic goals of highlighting systemic injustices."

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
It does feel like there is an element of cherry picking in the chosen data presentations. It invites believing “injustice” trends while obfuscating what the true multiple-comparisons adjustment for some type of significance or posterior credibility would be. The conclusion that tickets are enforced in a way that manifests injustice is probably broadly true, but the data presentation actually makes it quite hard to interpret what’s “real” and what might just be an artifact of cherry picking, not to mention what slices of the data could be exhibiting something like Simpson’s paradox, etc.
arcticfox 8y ago
I appreciate the goals of this project, but IMO they aren't being very rigorous about it, and really only arrive at the conclusion that "more blacks are poor, and tickets hit poor people very hard", which I think anyone would already agree with before this study. I don't really understand what the ward breakdown adds. "Which Ward Owes The Most?": right, poor people can't afford to pay tickets and build up debt. "Where People Are Ticketed Most": this seemed promising. I clicked and mostly majority-white neighborhoods popped to the top. This is explained away by saying they're more congested; OK, fair enough, but try to control for that by population density? Or something? How am I supposed to read "unfair to minorities" out of that? "How Ticket Type Varies By Ward": maybe there's something here, but this seems just as related to other factors to me as the previous point. From what I've seen in Chicago, the majority-black neighborhoods are vastly different than the majority-white neighborhoods (I feel like ProPublica would agree), so a difference in ticket type seems incredibly logical. Yet here it's not dismissed like they dismissed the previous category. "What Happens if You Don’t Pay": right, poor people can't afford to pay tickets and it ends in a property seizure or bankruptcy. "Who Appeals and Wins": sorting by "Percent contested and won" the minority neighborhoods fair very well, consisting of 5 of the top 8.
- IOT_Apprentice 8y ago
  Perhaps to call out the politicians who could do something about the preying on the poorer areas?

_Codemonkeyism 8y ago

What made me wonder: Single developer setting up app with a bunch of microservices in the backend claiming low maintenance, would really be interested in an evaluation 2y in the future.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

Microservices and using Make to wrap their chosen build tooling - I love it! This is similar to what my team does with a set of about 20 computer vision and NLP web services, in an environment with fairly high web traffic (Alexa top 300 site), with a large and distributed team of engineers. In our case several parts also involve Docker & CI such that common Makefiles are used by all parties and all config is externalized to the build and/or runtime environment. It has worked extremely well for many years now.

dstroot 8y ago

I have always enjoyed articles like this that clearly explain the problem they are trying to solve, why they are solving it, and how they are solving it all the way down to the tech stack (which is the most interesting bits along with UI design for me). Worth the read time.

Chris_Chambers 8y ago
This comment is useless.

everybodyknows 8y ago

Propublica list of data sets, some offering free download: https://www.propublica.org/datastore/datasets https://www.propublica.org/datastore/datasets

everybodyknows 8y ago

The project would smell sweeter if the top page of the app weren't hitting facebook.net -- https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/ https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/

Simulacra 8y ago

It’s interesting that Low income people are the ones disproportionally hit by the number of tickets, but I guess the question that needs answering is: are they in fact breaking the law? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a parking ticket for something I haven’t legitimately done wrong, they suck, but if you break the law you get a ticket. So I’m just curious is the map supposed to help us understand that the police are disproportionately ticketing in low income areas, and by that reasoning less in higher income areas ? Just trying to understand what’s the lesson we should take away from this. Should we forgive tickets to people who are low income?

4werfaw34r 8y ago
I don't think that's what they are trying to say at all: https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/ https://projects.propublica.org/chicago-tickets/ Some of the insights they pull from this data: Most tickets are issues in majority-black wards, in places with high poverty rates. Motorists in these wards were found more at risk of losing a vehicle or declaring bankruptcy. Most tickets that are contested are in more well-to-do, majority-white wards, and contested tickets have more than a 50% chance of the driver being found not liable. Here's what I draw from this: Parking tickets frequently trap the poor into a cycle of debt. People who have money and free time have more resources available to challenge the ticket and not have to pay. That doesn't say to me "we should forgive tickets for low income residents" but it says to me we need to find other ways to enforce the parking laws that don't just make the poor even poorer.
- c22 8y ago
  Tickets should be adjusted for income. If someone making $200,000 a year has to pay $50 for parking in the wrong place then someone who makes $20,000 should have to pay $5.