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The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racis

by bhntr3 6y ago

The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. There are two reasons I don't think that works: 1. I don't see how one evaluates the correctness of the process that controls for racism. What is ground truth for anti-racist policing? 2. These systems are likely snake oil and the vendors of these systems are (possibly inadvertently) profiting off racist policing. If cops arrest more black people per capita, then send the cops to black neighborhoods and have them follow black parolees. The system works (according to an objective function which maximizes arrests.) Remove racism and send the cops to white neighborhoods. Now the cops don't arrest as many people. The system fails. So I think it's likely that if you remove racist policing from predictive policing, you get the null hypothesis. I'd be happy to hear a counterargument from someone who has actual statistics on this though. [1] If you don't believe this, you're in the minority now: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests-white-people-police-racism https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests...

riazrizvi 6y ago
Indeed. And worse they can then become an excuse to hide racist policy inside. Racist governor, buys racist software, to drive racist policing, loved by favored racist constituents, "It's not my administration, it's the software, algorithms are objective, black people are the problem...". Maybe systemic racism is a feature of these systems, not a bug?
- birdyrooster 6y ago
  Racists abuse plausible deniability and care not for the loss in social trust and cohesion. I really think you are right and I hope one day we might know the truth.
- HeWhoLurksLate 6y ago
  Maybe it's not the software that's at fault, but society?
Narhem 6y ago
These systems are mostly pointless. If you really want to stop crimes, you have to get involved with the community and understand why they are happening.
- yurlungur 6y ago
  I think preventative measures to reduce community crime levels are not a bad idea. It just sounds very inappropriate if it was the police department doing it, especially if the community has fear and antagonism towards the police. If these were social workers knocking on doors and showing people how they can improve their lives by new education opportunities etc this would be much less problematic to me.
whatshisface 6y ago
To [1]: Totally abstracted from anything you said, a poll that people believe something does not in any way resemble evidence that it is true. For example, only 8% of Jehovas Witnesses[2] believe that humans evolved. Is that evidence that JWs didn't evolve? "If you don't believe this you're in the minority now" has never in history been a good argument for anything, even if you are using it to try and prove something true. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bhntr3 6y ago
  Of course that's true. I wasn't so much trying to provide evidence as to point out that people who felt comfortable saying "I'm not racist but I don't think this country is racist either" should not feel comfortable socially expressing that position anymore. Social proof may not be evidence but it is powerful in changing people's minds who might not be as receptive to facts and figures. I don't mind if people believe the right thing for the wrong reasons (at least these days with how anti-science a segment of the population seems to be.)
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - adwn 6y ago
    > at least these days with how anti-science a segment of the population seems to be Considering the truly abysmal track record of the social sciences [1], this seems at the very least understandable with regards to the "non-hard" sciences. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
  - whatshisface 6y ago
    >should not feel comfortable socially expressing that position anymore What people feel safe in expressing, when "safe" means "safe from peers disagreeing with you," is a terrible reason to believe something. If I came back with a poll of my local area that said all of my peers thought racism wasn't systemic, would you council me to agree with them? That's an extremely dysfunctional way of thinking.
onetimeusename 6y ago
What is the claim when data is said to include systemic racism and bias? Is it that race data does indeed predict higher crime but that biased policing causes the crime rate to be misreported as higher because police only focus their attention on certain areas? Is it that police actually cause crime due to racist beliefs so that they must in some way entice crimes to be committed? Is it that crimes are equal between races but they go under-reported in some areas and over-reported in others due to systemic racism? Some or all of the above? What would controlling for racism involve doing?
- hckr_news 6y ago
  Let’s start by not using software to police people. Is this China?
- jjeaff 6y ago
  For myriad of reasons, we know clearly that controlling for no other factors, crime is higher among black populations. So to extrapolate that any one person is more likely to commit a crime because they are black is the definition of racism. It is not ok to assume that someone might be more likely guilty or more likely to commit a crime based on the color of their skin. Even if you had perfect historical data. It's just not acceptable ethically, morally, whatsoever. And the very idea by some that it is ok, as long as your stereotypes are backed by accurate data, perpetuates racial oppression and creates a self fulfilling prophecy.
  - metrokoi 6y ago
    >So to extrapolate that any one person is more likely to commit a crime because they are black is the definition of racism. But it's true, a black individual is on average more likely to commit a crime. How can recognizing an obvious fact be racism? Aren't you also racist for recognizing that crime is higher among black populations? It's racist to treat a black individual as if they have committed a crime or treat them differently because of it, not to recognize that a black individual is on average more likely to commit a crime. I don't understand how you would come to that conclusion.
alfalfasprout 6y ago
I agree that, in general, you're going to have biased training data (with a bias that's difficult to measure) and so inherently policing recommendations will be biased. This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement. Eg; drug-related crimes, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing. But the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods. And black americans are calling the police at higher rates knowing full-well what that might imply [1](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf). Anecdotally, when I lived in south side Chicago, when speaking to residents (that did not live in a predominantly affluent area like Hyde Park) one of the key complaints was that there simply wasn't enough police to respond to violent incidents. There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.
- r00fus 6y ago
  From studies I’ve read it is noted that most of those calls could be handled by a social worker or other non-violent responder. The problem is the police budget has dwarfed and subsumed all non-violent requests as well.
  - starkd 6y ago
    Not sure You can always separate out violent from non-violent events. The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.
    - r00fus 6y ago
      It's easy - when someone wants a well-check or reports mental health or substance abuse or maybe even rape, that should go to someone other than police. Showing up with a gun to some events is guaranteed to make things worse.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Is reality racist or just the data used to describe it? If the latter, I see no issue with your argument. If the former, I think we need be careful about legislating reality ( mostly because it doesn't work ).
- SkyBelow 6y ago
  What if it is such only because we made it so? For example, policing policies that increase fatherlessness in specific communities will result in increased levels of crime. But to then take a 'fair' approach at distribution of policing policies based on the actual crime data, and then use that to continue to keep the policies that caused the problem to begin with seems a bug that needs to be fixed (though some would point out it was more of a purposefully designed feature).
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    The problem with the contrary approach is that there are increased levels of crime there. Children end up equally fatherless -- possibly moreso -- if their fathers are killed by gang violence as if their fathers are in prison. You don't solve the problem by sending police away from the places with the most crime. You solve it by fixing the root causes. End the war on drugs, because prohibition is the primary funding source for gangs. Make it easier to start a small business, so that more people without much capital can start small businesses. Change the zoning to make it easier for people to start a small business out of their home instead of needing enough capital to secure prohibitively expensive business properties. Stop tying schools to real estate and let people choose to send their kids to any school they want. Most of these are local issues that exist predominantly in cities and states with Democrat-majority legislatures. They could have been solved decades ago. They could be solved right now with the stroke of a pen.
    - totony 6y ago
      >End the war on drugs This would fix so much imo. It's starting (weed legalization), but going way too slow. People are still delusional about legal = good, illegal = bad, we just added one drug to the legal ones.
wjsetzer 6y ago
I heard a Reply All episode about the use of CompStat in NYC, which is just a manual algorithm for predictive policing. It started as a useful tool to prevent crime, but devolved into racial profiling as officers began to downgrade crimes in their reports to make their numbers look better, until eventually it resulted in racial profiling and arresting people on false charges.
- anitil 6y ago
  Excellent episode. Part I: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h967 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h967 Part II: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hwl7 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hwl7
SkyBelow 6y ago
>The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. One thing that constantly annoys me is that while people are becoming well aware of how racist our legal system is, but are still just as blind as ever to how sexist it is, despite the extent of sexism being greater than the extent of racism (the disparity of justice is greater for gender than for race). This in turn makes any speeches concerning how we need to make the system more just have a bit of a hollow ring to them much in the same way as when you hear a marriage equality speech from someone fighting for equality of interracial marriages while ignoring the discrimination same sex marriages face (granted, that happens far less than I remember 10 to 15 years ago). For example, you can find many police departments that handle probation have a way to rating the risk level of offenders. People are fine with this system taking into account gender even as they fight to prevent it from using race. I was able to help with testing one such system once, and while the insides were a company secret we weren't allowed to see (which is worth an entire rant on its own), the general pattern was for all else but gender being constant, males received a higher risk rating than females. Very minor or very severe crimes would receive the same ratings but otherwise it seemed pretty clear cut on how it discriminated based on gender. Even in this specific case, while they have banned some forms of predictive policing, I think it is safe to assume they'll still use other forms such as using gender when assessing the risk level of offenders and then using that risk level to either deny probation/parole or to set the level of probation/parole the offender receives.
- monadic2 6y ago
  While discontent with policing has bubbled up in the form of outrage over racist policing, I don’t see any obliviousness to gender at all—I mean I saw a sign just yesterday that read “bring our black men home”. It’s just very difficult, apparently, to express the nuances of systemic bigotry as expressed through policing in even something as short as a modern speech.
- handoflixue 6y ago
  Part of the problem with addressing Sexism in policing is that "women commit violent/dangerous crimes less often than men" is a less obviously wrong statement, since there are actually really clear biological differences between the sexes, and those biological differences influence both strength and propensity towards competitive/violent engagement. I am 100% not trying to defend this; I agree with you that there's a problem. But I've never actually seen much research that demonstrates that there's a problem, even when there obviously is one. For instance, women can't rape men and it is instead legally classed as "forced envelopment" or something, so there's... very, very clearly a disparity, but almost no one ever hears about it. I can't think of any reliable central archive of information that isn't vividly a "Men's Rights Activist" website that screams 90s conspiracy theorists. EDIT: If you do know of any useful sources for spreading the idea, I'd love to hear about them.
ThrustVectoring 6y ago
There's a fundamental tension between generating equitable outcomes and using race-agnostic decision-making processes. This is true for racial policy in general, not just policing - for instance, university admissions has to choose between admitting an unfairly large number of Asians on the one hand, and penalizing Asian applicants merely for being Asian on the other. If generating a racially fair predictive policing algorithm was merely a question of optimizing for one of these desiderata, it'd be possible in principle. You either ensure that the appropriate racial ratios pop out for the neighborhoods to patrol, or you ensure that racial information and their proxies aren't used in the algorithm. If any algorithm is unacceptable unless it does both, well, you're probably going to be disappointed.
ryankemper 6y ago
> Since racism is systemic[1] > [1] If you don't believe this, you're in the minority now: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.... This part was a little odd. It sounds like you're saying "because this belief is widely held by people, we should treat it as true"? I definitely am in the minority, but I find a much more logically consistent view than the modern definition of systemic racism to actually be "there are systems of authority/control/oppression, which by their nature can be exploited by racists (or other groups) to advance their ends". In other words - and I hope this isn't too off topic of a tangent - one of the primary goals of the BLM protest seems to be "racism is leading to excess death/imprisonment for black americans, so let's try to purge any traces of racism to eliminate these excess deaths". Which to me is missing the point: practices/systems like no-knock raids, the war on drugs, civil asset forfeiture, etc give police officers an excuse to be able to violently invade someone's home (no-knock), violate 4th amendment rights (war on drugs wrt "I smelled weed in your car"), criminalize behavior that happens to be broken along racial and class lines (non-violent drug usage/possession/distribution). In other words, the problem is not that there are racist people in the system, but that we have these systems that give racist individuals the perfect excuse to achieve their nefarious ends. That's because we've built a system that justifies and encourages oppression, and we can see that without having to introduce racee. Anyway, I'm not hear to debunk "systemic racism" since like so many of the new-speak definitions/words, as soon as you try to debunk it people claim that you're using the wrong definition. But I do think it should be noted that when it comes to looking at actual research literature on, say, likelihood of being shot by police in a given encounter broken down by race, the "systemic racism" doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. Whereas we can make incredibly important societal change without needing to introduce the idea of systemic racism, simply by addressing the actual systems of oppression we have set up that give police officers the ability to randomly pull a citizen over and harass them since at any given moment each of us is violating a nonzero number of laws.
- rexpop 6y ago
  > behavior that happens to be broken along racial and class lines A huge coincidence.
- 6y ago
nimbius 6y ago
Disclosure: I have been incarcerated in the United States for a drug crime. The sentence amounted to a three year stint and a 2 year parole for cannabis. 1. Cops arrest you based on success. If they can make sure you're a slam dunk at trial, then you're in handcuffs. Arresting the poorest black people will always result in a win for their career record. Simply put,racism is almost designed to be part of the system. 2. Bingo. Building more police stations in poor neighborhoods puts a jackboot to anyone who complains about the closures of public health clinics, social workers and psych wards. It can only ever be deemed a success because critics are 'superpredators' and not just incredibly poor or unfortunate. Political dissent from poverty gets bureaucratically disguised as rote criminality. Cops at any level, even the sec, are incredible reticent about the idea of policing what they see as either too delicate, productive, or successful.
Gibbon1 6y ago
> If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. This comment reminds me of something I saw earlier this morning. A bunch of redlining maps in various cities in California. Made think of something other than, Black and Hispanic people couldn't get loans in the neighborhoods they lived in. Yadda yadda. The flipside is whites couldn't get loans in those neighborhoods either. Which meant if you were a middle class white person you couldn't buy a cheaper house in a mixed neighborhood. You were pretty much forced to buy in a neighborhood where covenants excluded Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. The system was designed to enhance segregation. More to your point when you have system that explicitly or implicitly categorizes people and uses that to single them out of punishment or harassment that's group punishment. That's usually considered a no no by civilized people.
easterncalculus 6y ago
I don't disagree with your cited point but your citation (vox) is generally awful, this article included. Why are they using a BLM approval poll from January of this year to make a point about people not caring? They choose to bold that citation and then use the more recent statistic unbolded later. Seems pretty deliberate on their part.
sacks2k 6y ago
"Since racism is systemic" You can't just say this without actual proof. The George Floyd killing was a tragedy, but not proof of systemic racism. On top of this, the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism. "Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist" Predictive policing only gives you an idea of where crime might occur based on previous crimes happening in the area and other factual data. Innocent people weren't being arrested in mass based on what the models tell them. Officers will send out a few more patrols to areas that historically have more crime based on these models and they will most likely arrest more as a result. This is a good thing and actually reduces the crime rate. Removing all of these systems on top of making it harder for the average person to defend themselves with a firearm will only result in the loss of innocent life and encourage more crime in mostly minority areas of the country. "If cops arrest more black people per capita, then send the cops to black neighborhoods and have them follow black parolees. The system works (according to an objective function which maximizes arrests.) Remove racism and send the cops to white neighborhoods. Now the cops don't arrest as many people. The system fails. So I think it's likely that if you remove racist policing from predictive policing, you get the null hypothesis." There is a bigger police presence in black neighborhoods because more crime happens there and as a result, more African Americans will be arrested. If we want to stop this, we need to get to the root of the problem instead of blaming everything else. Calling it 'systemic racism' is just another way of creating a bias against an entire group of people without having any actual proof to back it up. It also allows for the complete absolving of personal responsibility. I feel like this is the beginning of the war on science because the results are politically incorrect. It's like a new woke religion and if you question the god of racism, you will have your entire life taken away from you (job, friends, and family). The only reason this nonsense persists is because the silent majority are too afraid to speak up and have everything taken away from them.
- alphakappa 6y ago
  > the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism. How do you infer this? It could also be the result of the mass country-wide protests which are absolutely not the norm. It's not like the system automatically corrected for this issue.
camdenlock 6y ago
I’d just like to point out that the number of people who believe something has zero real bearing on that thing being true. I’m not saying it’s irrelevant in all avenues of study, but in terms of a thing being true, it is indeed irrelevant. So we have to be careful about shaming each other for not following the majority.
miked85 6y ago
> [1] If you don't believe this, you're in the minority now: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.... A citation that 1) says I might be in the minority so should believe the citation to be in the majority and 2) references vox.com is hardly credible.
sfj 6y ago
> Since racism is systemic... Regardless of public opinion, how do we know this? Couldn't black people be just innately more violent then whites due to genetics? They certainly have dominated professional sports which indicate there are at least some differences. Wouldn't that extend to mental attributes as well, or does evolution and biology just stop at the neck? Edit: I just died... hello ghost viewers! Such wrongthink, double plus bad
- dang 6y ago
  We've banned this account for doing race war on HN. Please don't create accounts to break the site rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - sfj 6y ago
    You banned me because I taunted you. Then you double downed on your passive aggressiveness by accusing me of something ridiculous. A theory that is not allowed to be challenged is just dogma. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
kebman 6y ago
A few facts to note: Blacks kill more blacks than any other race or ethinicity.[1] Blacks also kill more whites, than whites kill blacks in pure numbers.[1] When you factor in the size of the respective populations on a per capita ratio, then the numbers just get worse.[2] On a more positive note, though, crimes are reported to generally have gone down over the last few years. In fact there's nothing in the data to suggest that there is a systemically racist problem in the USA. If anything, the data has a bias towards whites...[1] As for the article from the clearly Left-biased Vox,[3] public opinion only reflects how poorly educated most people are about the matter. If you think it's racist of me, a Sami minority person from Norway to say this—whose history also contains a lot of racism and atrocities systematically committed towards the Sami people—then please just excuse what I just said, and instead look at this black person saying just about the same exact thing.[4] Here's another slightly more famous black person wheighing in on the matter, with his opinion on what might be the cause of this tragedy.[5] Either way I don't believe in original sin, or that the current generation should atone for the sins of their fathers. The sad fact that I'm forced to refer to black-only sources before anyone will believe me—a slightly racist thing to demand in the first place—should tell you how stigmatizing this discussion has become. Most people don't even dare to quote facts these days, and for good reason! Nevermind being banned from social media; people these days stand to lose their jobs if they have the wrong opinion! This is extremely chilling on the much needed democratic discussion on this topic. Thus I hope people will refrain from personal attacks or downvoting, and instead will use well researched factual sources to discuss the matter in a civil way. Thank you! [1]: FBI murder statistics by race from 2018, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls?fbclid=IwAR2ADX5hu45ubxa8DORYoVZgcznIlJ9di5MpsIKNPPB3zyqKgvuxxxLZ9tk https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-... 2018 was the latest year I could find such data on. [2]: US Census Bureau, ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates 2018, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?d=ACS%205-Year%20Estimates%20Data%20Profiles&table=DP05&tid=ACSDP5Y2018.DP05 https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?d=ACS%205-Year%20Estima... [3]: VOX, "White Americans are finally talking about racism. Will it translate into action?" https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests-white-people-police-racism https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests... [4]: The Systemic Racism and Police Brutality Narrative is Getting People Killed | Larry Elder, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z572XopBVFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z572XopBVFc [5]: Denzel Washington on systemic racism in the USA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0dCvQdt5XI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0dCvQdt5XI
natalyarostova 6y ago
This is over intellectualizing and already hyped up topic. Predictive “ML” here is closer to an excel spreadsheet with crimes per block, sorted from largest to highest, with more police sent to the high ones. It’s not some weird deep net trained in secret crazy data. More people get shot in some areas, so more police go there. That’s what they’re saying.
MarxOk 6y ago
> There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. This kind of thinking is so prevalent in tech circles. As long as we keep expecting technical solutions to every social problem, we'll stay to be at the mercy of FAANG and their machine learning algorithms. I hope this decision begins a wider movement against racist and sexist ML algorithms that are gradually infecting so many parts of society.
roamerz 6y ago
I’m trying to figure out how PP is the problem. You send police to a high crime area and they incarcerate people that break the law. Let’s instead send the police to a zero crime area. The cops have an easy shift and arrest no one. That high crime area now has businesses and such moving out because they can’t afford the losses. They take the jobs with them. Now people in the area are unemployed and soon become homeless. Now you have a problem that is spiraling out of control. You think the people that are now left in that area are happy because their lives went from poor to shit? How is that helping?
mmm_grayons 6y ago
> If you don't believe [racism is systemic], you're in the minority now A majority-held opinion is not a citation. Which systems explicitly favor whites over blacks?
deleted 6y ago
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nsonha 6y ago
> The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. You started off with a really strong point but then immediately narrowed it down to race. The fundamental issue with this is, foremost, that such a system limits second chances and is used to discriminate against people with a criminal past. It's normalized in our society and shouldn't be.

by bhntr3 6y ago

riazrizvi 6y ago

Indeed. And worse they can then become an excuse to hide racist policy inside. Racist governor, buys racist software, to drive racist policing, loved by favored racist constituents, "It's not my administration, it's the software, algorithms are objective, black people are the problem...". Maybe systemic racism is a feature of these systems, not a bug?

birdyrooster 6y ago
Racists abuse plausible deniability and care not for the loss in social trust and cohesion. I really think you are right and I hope one day we might know the truth.
HeWhoLurksLate 6y ago
Maybe it's not the software that's at fault, but society?

Narhem 6y ago

These systems are mostly pointless. If you really want to stop crimes, you have to get involved with the community and understand why they are happening.

yurlungur 6y ago
I think preventative measures to reduce community crime levels are not a bad idea. It just sounds very inappropriate if it was the police department doing it, especially if the community has fear and antagonism towards the police. If these were social workers knocking on doors and showing people how they can improve their lives by new education opportunities etc this would be much less problematic to me.

whatshisface 6y ago

To [1]: Totally abstracted from anything you said, a poll that people believe something does not in any way resemble evidence that it is true. For example, only 8% of Jehovas Witnesses[2] believe that humans evolved. Is that evidence that JWs didn't evolve? "If you don't believe this you're in the minority now" has never in history been a good argument for anything, even if you are using it to try and prove something true. [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_support_for_evolution

deleted 6y ago
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bhntr3 6y ago
Of course that's true. I wasn't so much trying to provide evidence as to point out that people who felt comfortable saying "I'm not racist but I don't think this country is racist either" should not feel comfortable socially expressing that position anymore. Social proof may not be evidence but it is powerful in changing people's minds who might not be as receptive to facts and figures. I don't mind if people believe the right thing for the wrong reasons (at least these days with how anti-science a segment of the population seems to be.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- adwn 6y ago
  > at least these days with how anti-science a segment of the population seems to be Considering the truly abysmal track record of the social sciences [1], this seems at the very least understandable with regards to the "non-hard" sciences. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
- whatshisface 6y ago
  >should not feel comfortable socially expressing that position anymore What people feel safe in expressing, when "safe" means "safe from peers disagreeing with you," is a terrible reason to believe something. If I came back with a poll of my local area that said all of my peers thought racism wasn't systemic, would you council me to agree with them? That's an extremely dysfunctional way of thinking.

onetimeusename 6y ago

What is the claim when data is said to include systemic racism and bias? Is it that race data does indeed predict higher crime but that biased policing causes the crime rate to be misreported as higher because police only focus their attention on certain areas? Is it that police actually cause crime due to racist beliefs so that they must in some way entice crimes to be committed? Is it that crimes are equal between races but they go under-reported in some areas and over-reported in others due to systemic racism? Some or all of the above? What would controlling for racism involve doing?

hckr_news 6y ago
Let’s start by not using software to police people. Is this China?
jjeaff 6y ago
For myriad of reasons, we know clearly that controlling for no other factors, crime is higher among black populations. So to extrapolate that any one person is more likely to commit a crime because they are black is the definition of racism. It is not ok to assume that someone might be more likely guilty or more likely to commit a crime based on the color of their skin. Even if you had perfect historical data. It's just not acceptable ethically, morally, whatsoever. And the very idea by some that it is ok, as long as your stereotypes are backed by accurate data, perpetuates racial oppression and creates a self fulfilling prophecy.
- metrokoi 6y ago
  >So to extrapolate that any one person is more likely to commit a crime because they are black is the definition of racism. But it's true, a black individual is on average more likely to commit a crime. How can recognizing an obvious fact be racism? Aren't you also racist for recognizing that crime is higher among black populations? It's racist to treat a black individual as if they have committed a crime or treat them differently because of it, not to recognize that a black individual is on average more likely to commit a crime. I don't understand how you would come to that conclusion.

alfalfasprout 6y ago

I agree that, in general, you're going to have biased training data (with a bias that's difficult to measure) and so inherently policing recommendations will be biased. This is particularly problematic when it comes to arrests for crimes that are inherently 'selective' in their enforcement. Eg; drug-related crimes, public intoxication, loitering, trespassing. But the fact is... violent (fatal and nonfatal) crimes do happen at a much higher rate in poor neighborhoods. And black americans are calling the police at higher rates knowing full-well what that might imply [1](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/hpnvv0812.pdf). Anecdotally, when I lived in south side Chicago, when speaking to residents (that did not live in a predominantly affluent area like Hyde Park) one of the key complaints was that there simply wasn't enough police to respond to violent incidents. There's a worrying trend in the conversation these days that has shifted from "there's a serious problem with racism in how police go about their job" to "we need less police". Folks in neighborhoods living with the constant threat of gang violence don't have the luxury to sit in their aeron chairs and argue about defunding the police. They face the very real threat of themselves or their loved ones being shot on the streets and statistically not by police.

r00fus 6y ago
From studies I’ve read it is noted that most of those calls could be handled by a social worker or other non-violent responder. The problem is the police budget has dwarfed and subsumed all non-violent requests as well.
- starkd 6y ago
  Not sure You can always separate out violent from non-violent events. The police are expected to deal with a whole community in a holistic way.
  - r00fus 6y ago
    It's easy - when someone wants a well-check or reports mental health or substance abuse or maybe even rape, that should go to someone other than police. Showing up with a gun to some events is guaranteed to make things worse.

A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago

Is reality racist or just the data used to describe it? If the latter, I see no issue with your argument. If the former, I think we need be careful about legislating reality ( mostly because it doesn't work ).

SkyBelow 6y ago
What if it is such only because we made it so? For example, policing policies that increase fatherlessness in specific communities will result in increased levels of crime. But to then take a 'fair' approach at distribution of policing policies based on the actual crime data, and then use that to continue to keep the policies that caused the problem to begin with seems a bug that needs to be fixed (though some would point out it was more of a purposefully designed feature).
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  The problem with the contrary approach is that there are increased levels of crime there. Children end up equally fatherless -- possibly moreso -- if their fathers are killed by gang violence as if their fathers are in prison. You don't solve the problem by sending police away from the places with the most crime. You solve it by fixing the root causes. End the war on drugs, because prohibition is the primary funding source for gangs. Make it easier to start a small business, so that more people without much capital can start small businesses. Change the zoning to make it easier for people to start a small business out of their home instead of needing enough capital to secure prohibitively expensive business properties. Stop tying schools to real estate and let people choose to send their kids to any school they want. Most of these are local issues that exist predominantly in cities and states with Democrat-majority legislatures. They could have been solved decades ago. They could be solved right now with the stroke of a pen.
  - totony 6y ago
    >End the war on drugs This would fix so much imo. It's starting (weed legalization), but going way too slow. People are still delusional about legal = good, illegal = bad, we just added one drug to the legal ones.

wjsetzer 6y ago

I heard a Reply All episode about the use of CompStat in NYC, which is just a manual algorithm for predictive policing. It started as a useful tool to prevent crime, but devolved into racial profiling as officers began to downgrade crimes in their reports to make their numbers look better, until eventually it resulted in racial profiling and arresting people on false charges.

anitil 6y ago
Excellent episode. Part I: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h967 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/76h967 Part II: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hwl7 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8hwl7

SkyBelow 6y ago

>The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. One thing that constantly annoys me is that while people are becoming well aware of how racist our legal system is, but are still just as blind as ever to how sexist it is, despite the extent of sexism being greater than the extent of racism (the disparity of justice is greater for gender than for race). This in turn makes any speeches concerning how we need to make the system more just have a bit of a hollow ring to them much in the same way as when you hear a marriage equality speech from someone fighting for equality of interracial marriages while ignoring the discrimination same sex marriages face (granted, that happens far less than I remember 10 to 15 years ago). For example, you can find many police departments that handle probation have a way to rating the risk level of offenders. People are fine with this system taking into account gender even as they fight to prevent it from using race. I was able to help with testing one such system once, and while the insides were a company secret we weren't allowed to see (which is worth an entire rant on its own), the general pattern was for all else but gender being constant, males received a higher risk rating than females. Very minor or very severe crimes would receive the same ratings but otherwise it seemed pretty clear cut on how it discriminated based on gender. Even in this specific case, while they have banned some forms of predictive policing, I think it is safe to assume they'll still use other forms such as using gender when assessing the risk level of offenders and then using that risk level to either deny probation/parole or to set the level of probation/parole the offender receives.

monadic2 6y ago
While discontent with policing has bubbled up in the form of outrage over racist policing, I don’t see any obliviousness to gender at all—I mean I saw a sign just yesterday that read “bring our black men home”. It’s just very difficult, apparently, to express the nuances of systemic bigotry as expressed through policing in even something as short as a modern speech.
handoflixue 6y ago
Part of the problem with addressing Sexism in policing is that "women commit violent/dangerous crimes less often than men" is a less obviously wrong statement, since there are actually really clear biological differences between the sexes, and those biological differences influence both strength and propensity towards competitive/violent engagement. I am 100% not trying to defend this; I agree with you that there's a problem. But I've never actually seen much research that demonstrates that there's a problem, even when there obviously is one. For instance, women can't rape men and it is instead legally classed as "forced envelopment" or something, so there's... very, very clearly a disparity, but almost no one ever hears about it. I can't think of any reliable central archive of information that isn't vividly a "Men's Rights Activist" website that screams 90s conspiracy theorists. EDIT: If you do know of any useful sources for spreading the idea, I'd love to hear about them.

ThrustVectoring 6y ago

There's a fundamental tension between generating equitable outcomes and using race-agnostic decision-making processes. This is true for racial policy in general, not just policing - for instance, university admissions has to choose between admitting an unfairly large number of Asians on the one hand, and penalizing Asian applicants merely for being Asian on the other. If generating a racially fair predictive policing algorithm was merely a question of optimizing for one of these desiderata, it'd be possible in principle. You either ensure that the appropriate racial ratios pop out for the neighborhoods to patrol, or you ensure that racial information and their proxies aren't used in the algorithm. If any algorithm is unacceptable unless it does both, well, you're probably going to be disappointed.

ryankemper 6y ago

> Since racism is systemic[1] > [1] If you don't believe this, you're in the minority now: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.... This part was a little odd. It sounds like you're saying "because this belief is widely held by people, we should treat it as true"? I definitely am in the minority, but I find a much more logically consistent view than the modern definition of systemic racism to actually be "there are systems of authority/control/oppression, which by their nature can be exploited by racists (or other groups) to advance their ends". In other words - and I hope this isn't too off topic of a tangent - one of the primary goals of the BLM protest seems to be "racism is leading to excess death/imprisonment for black americans, so let's try to purge any traces of racism to eliminate these excess deaths". Which to me is missing the point: practices/systems like no-knock raids, the war on drugs, civil asset forfeiture, etc give police officers an excuse to be able to violently invade someone's home (no-knock), violate 4th amendment rights (war on drugs wrt "I smelled weed in your car"), criminalize behavior that happens to be broken along racial and class lines (non-violent drug usage/possession/distribution). In other words, the problem is not that there are racist people in the system, but that we have these systems that give racist individuals the perfect excuse to achieve their nefarious ends. That's because we've built a system that justifies and encourages oppression, and we can see that without having to introduce racee. Anyway, I'm not hear to debunk "systemic racism" since like so many of the new-speak definitions/words, as soon as you try to debunk it people claim that you're using the wrong definition. But I do think it should be noted that when it comes to looking at actual research literature on, say, likelihood of being shot by police in a given encounter broken down by race, the "systemic racism" doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. Whereas we can make incredibly important societal change without needing to introduce the idea of systemic racism, simply by addressing the actual systems of oppression we have set up that give police officers the ability to randomly pull a citizen over and harass them since at any given moment each of us is violating a nonzero number of laws.

rexpop 6y ago
> behavior that happens to be broken along racial and class lines A huge coincidence.
6y ago

nimbius 6y ago

Disclosure: I have been incarcerated in the United States for a drug crime. The sentence amounted to a three year stint and a 2 year parole for cannabis. 1. Cops arrest you based on success. If they can make sure you're a slam dunk at trial, then you're in handcuffs. Arresting the poorest black people will always result in a win for their career record. Simply put,racism is almost designed to be part of the system. 2. Bingo. Building more police stations in poor neighborhoods puts a jackboot to anyone who complains about the closures of public health clinics, social workers and psych wards. It can only ever be deemed a success because critics are 'superpredators' and not just incredibly poor or unfortunate. Political dissent from poverty gets bureaucratically disguised as rote criminality. Cops at any level, even the sec, are incredible reticent about the idea of policing what they see as either too delicate, productive, or successful.

Gibbon1 6y ago

> If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. Since racism is systemic[1], especially when it comes to policing, predictive policing is actively working against an anti-racist future. This comment reminds me of something I saw earlier this morning. A bunch of redlining maps in various cities in California. Made think of something other than, Black and Hispanic people couldn't get loans in the neighborhoods they lived in. Yadda yadda. The flipside is whites couldn't get loans in those neighborhoods either. Which meant if you were a middle class white person you couldn't buy a cheaper house in a mixed neighborhood. You were pretty much forced to buy in a neighborhood where covenants excluded Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. The system was designed to enhance segregation. More to your point when you have system that explicitly or implicitly categorizes people and uses that to single them out of punishment or harassment that's group punishment. That's usually considered a no no by civilized people.

easterncalculus 6y ago

I don't disagree with your cited point but your citation (vox) is generally awful, this article included. Why are they using a BLM approval poll from January of this year to make a point about people not caring? They choose to bold that citation and then use the more recent statistic unbolded later. Seems pretty deliberate on their part.

sacks2k 6y ago

"Since racism is systemic" You can't just say this without actual proof. The George Floyd killing was a tragedy, but not proof of systemic racism. On top of this, the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism. "Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist" Predictive policing only gives you an idea of where crime might occur based on previous crimes happening in the area and other factual data. Innocent people weren't being arrested in mass based on what the models tell them. Officers will send out a few more patrols to areas that historically have more crime based on these models and they will most likely arrest more as a result. This is a good thing and actually reduces the crime rate. Removing all of these systems on top of making it harder for the average person to defend themselves with a firearm will only result in the loss of innocent life and encourage more crime in mostly minority areas of the country. "If cops arrest more black people per capita, then send the cops to black neighborhoods and have them follow black parolees. The system works (according to an objective function which maximizes arrests.) Remove racism and send the cops to white neighborhoods. Now the cops don't arrest as many people. The system fails. So I think it's likely that if you remove racist policing from predictive policing, you get the null hypothesis." There is a bigger police presence in black neighborhoods because more crime happens there and as a result, more African Americans will be arrested. If we want to stop this, we need to get to the root of the problem instead of blaming everything else. Calling it 'systemic racism' is just another way of creating a bias against an entire group of people without having any actual proof to back it up. It also allows for the complete absolving of personal responsibility. I feel like this is the beginning of the war on science because the results are politically incorrect. It's like a new woke religion and if you question the god of racism, you will have your entire life taken away from you (job, friends, and family). The only reason this nonsense persists is because the silent majority are too afraid to speak up and have everything taken away from them.

alphakappa 6y ago
> the officer involved (who actually knew George Floyd prior to killing him) is being brought up on charges, which is the exact opposite of what happens in a system that has systemic racism. How do you infer this? It could also be the result of the mass country-wide protests which are absolutely not the norm. It's not like the system automatically corrected for this issue.

camdenlock 6y ago

I’d just like to point out that the number of people who believe something has zero real bearing on that thing being true. I’m not saying it’s irrelevant in all avenues of study, but in terms of a thing being true, it is indeed irrelevant. So we have to be careful about shaming each other for not following the majority.

miked85 6y ago

> [1] If you don't believe this, you're in the minority now: https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.. https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests.... A citation that 1) says I might be in the minority so should believe the citation to be in the majority and 2) references vox.com is hardly credible.

sfj 6y ago

> Since racism is systemic... Regardless of public opinion, how do we know this? Couldn't black people be just innately more violent then whites due to genetics? They certainly have dominated professional sports which indicate there are at least some differences. Wouldn't that extend to mental attributes as well, or does evolution and biology just stop at the neck? Edit: I just died... hello ghost viewers! Such wrongthink, double plus bad

dang 6y ago
We've banned this account for doing race war on HN. Please don't create accounts to break the site rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sfj 6y ago
  You banned me because I taunted you. Then you double downed on your passive aggressiveness by accusing me of something ridiculous. A theory that is not allowed to be challenged is just dogma. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

kebman 6y ago

A few facts to note: Blacks kill more blacks than any other race or ethinicity.[1] Blacks also kill more whites, than whites kill blacks in pure numbers.[1] When you factor in the size of the respective populations on a per capita ratio, then the numbers just get worse.[2] On a more positive note, though, crimes are reported to generally have gone down over the last few years. In fact there's nothing in the data to suggest that there is a systemically racist problem in the USA. If anything, the data has a bias towards whites...[1] As for the article from the clearly Left-biased Vox,[3] public opinion only reflects how poorly educated most people are about the matter. If you think it's racist of me, a Sami minority person from Norway to say this—whose history also contains a lot of racism and atrocities systematically committed towards the Sami people—then please just excuse what I just said, and instead look at this black person saying just about the same exact thing.[4] Here's another slightly more famous black person wheighing in on the matter, with his opinion on what might be the cause of this tragedy.[5] Either way I don't believe in original sin, or that the current generation should atone for the sins of their fathers. The sad fact that I'm forced to refer to black-only sources before anyone will believe me—a slightly racist thing to demand in the first place—should tell you how stigmatizing this discussion has become. Most people don't even dare to quote facts these days, and for good reason! Nevermind being banned from social media; people these days stand to lose their jobs if they have the wrong opinion! This is extremely chilling on the much needed democratic discussion on this topic. Thus I hope people will refrain from personal attacks or downvoting, and instead will use well researched factual sources to discuss the matter in a civil way. Thank you! [1]: FBI murder statistics by race from 2018, https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-2018/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-6.xls?fbclid=IwAR2ADX5hu45ubxa8DORYoVZgcznIlJ9di5MpsIKNPPB3zyqKgvuxxxLZ9tk https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-... 2018 was the latest year I could find such data on. [2]: US Census Bureau, ACS Demographic and Housing Estimates 2018, https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?d=ACS%205-Year%20Estimates%20Data%20Profiles&table=DP05&tid=ACSDP5Y2018.DP05 https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?d=ACS%205-Year%20Estima... [3]: VOX, "White Americans are finally talking about racism. Will it translate into action?" https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests-white-people-police-racism https://www.vox.com/2020/6/11/21286642/george-floyd-protests... [4]: The Systemic Racism and Police Brutality Narrative is Getting People Killed | Larry Elder, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z572XopBVFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z572XopBVFc [5]: Denzel Washington on systemic racism in the USA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0dCvQdt5XI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0dCvQdt5XI

natalyarostova 6y ago

This is over intellectualizing and already hyped up topic. Predictive “ML” here is closer to an excel spreadsheet with crimes per block, sorted from largest to highest, with more police sent to the high ones. It’s not some weird deep net trained in secret crazy data. More people get shot in some areas, so more police go there. That’s what they’re saying.

MarxOk 6y ago

> There may be statistical ways to factor out systemic racism. This kind of thinking is so prevalent in tech circles. As long as we keep expecting technical solutions to every social problem, we'll stay to be at the mercy of FAANG and their machine learning algorithms. I hope this decision begins a wider movement against racist and sexist ML algorithms that are gradually infecting so many parts of society.

roamerz 6y ago

I’m trying to figure out how PP is the problem. You send police to a high crime area and they incarcerate people that break the law. Let’s instead send the police to a zero crime area. The cops have an easy shift and arrest no one. That high crime area now has businesses and such moving out because they can’t afford the losses. They take the jobs with them. Now people in the area are unemployed and soon become homeless. Now you have a problem that is spiraling out of control. You think the people that are now left in that area are happy because their lives went from poor to shit? How is that helping?

mmm_grayons 6y ago

> If you don't believe [racism is systemic], you're in the minority now A majority-held opinion is not a citation. Which systems explicitly favor whites over blacks?

deleted 6y ago

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nsonha 6y ago

> The problem with predictive policing is in the name. Inference (ML) predicts the future from the past. If the past is racist, then inference will create a racist future. You started off with a really strong point but then immediately narrowed it down to race. The fundamental issue with this is, foremost, that such a system limits second chances and is used to discriminate against people with a criminal past. It's normalized in our society and shouldn't be.