8 ms·

Well, yes, the problem is the idea of policing itself. How do you determine if the police are being successful? If there are more arrests, are they more succes

by geofft 5y ago

Well, yes, the problem is the idea of policing itself. How do you determine if the police are being successful? If there are more arrests, are they more successful? Perhaps you ask about crime statistics - but those statistics are recorded by the police. I think we all have anecdotal stories of police refusing to take police reports or saying that something is a civil matter, or simply witnessing violations of minor laws (jaywalking, littering, etc.) and doing nothing. Not only does this mean that police can very easily control crime statistics, it means that if your actual goal is preventing some specific crimes, it's not guaranteed that the police are actually working on it. One theory is that the function of the police is to maintain order, by which is meant the status quo. Police exist to make sure that white neighborhoods don't start to feel like black neighborhoods, and that black neighborhoods don't start to feel like white neighborhoods. In that model, the two data-driven approaches (predictive policing and DICFP) fall into the same trap that any hacker on HN who has run into office politics is familiar with: the data isn't being used to decide what to do, it's being used to defend an existing decision by powerful people and argue that the decision is right. Should we keep text-based content or pivot to video? Facebook's PMs, who keep the official record of whether people watch videos, have data claiming we should pivot to video. Should we keep patrolling the same neighborhoods we've always patrolled? The police, who keep the official record of crimes, have data saying that crime is bad there.

chuckee 5y ago
> Not only does this mean that police can very easily control crime statistics One could compare police statistics with victim surveys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_S...) to check how close they match. Or look at homicide statistics, that are not so easy to control. But then one could no longer dismiss all inconvenient data with a simple "the police are racist". So one keeps one's head in the sand and sticks to that line.
- simion314 5y ago
  For many crimes there might not be bodies to count. So I think that just from a math point of view(no race/social stuff interpretation) , you can be in a situation where the starting data combined with bad algorithm will keep you stuck in a local minimum. Probably math people can model this issue with abstract terms not to offend any color of politics you prefer but you have the issue of bad implementation and as always garbage in is garbage out, so you might need an algorithm that starts with zero input and uses random data and converges slowly , but you still need a way to make sure you keep the algorithm evolving with changes over large time (maybe reset it and make it start over after a few years)
- eesmith 5y ago
  Indeed, it opens up the topic to a wider question - why are some things counted as crimes and others not? For example, why isn't wage theft included in the NCVS? Surface-level answer: because in most jurisdictions, it's not a criminal offense. Steal $100 from your employer? Go to jail. Your employer requires unpaid overtime adding up to $1,000? A slap on the wrist at best. Yet employees are victims to billions of dollars of wage theft every year! "Sixty-eight percent of the surveyed workers experienced at least one pay-related violation in the week prior to the survey. On average the workers in the three cities lost a total of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations, out of an average income of $17,616, which translates into wage theft of fifteen percent of income." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft . Does the NCVS list that over half of employees are victims of wage theft? Why, it's almost as if the laws were structured against poor people in favor of business. Hmm, and ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the poor population. What about the illegal collusion between Silicon Valley companies to suppress worker wages? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... . Were all 64,000 employees counted as victims in the NCVS? Again, no, because that was a civil suit, not a crime that the police should be involved in. But again, why is it under civil law, not criminal? (There's no hint that this wage theft is due to racism.) Or, were the events leading to the lead poisoning of the water of Flint, MI and its coverups a crime? If so, why isn't the population of Flint included as victims? If not, why not? Or, in discussions related to the 'school-prison nexus', when disproportionate disciplinary actions are taken against students of color, are those students counted as victims? Why or why not? You are correct. All this inconvenient data indeed makes people dismiss the 'simple "the police are racist"' and replace it with "the system is both racist and biased in favor of the rich".
  - chuckee 5y ago
    A moment ago the conversation was about violent crime and "over-policing creates racist bias in crime data". Now it's about laws treating corporate crimes more leniently. You raise good points, and use them to deftly move past all the claims of racism that homicide statistics and victim surveys largely (but not entirely) refute.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
> Police exist to make sure that white neighborhoods don't start to feel like black neighborhoods, and that black neighborhoods don't start to feel like white neighborhoods. Ermmm.. what?
mc32 5y ago
All people ideally should live in places free of deleterious crime. If I live in Walnut Creek I don’t care what happens on international boulevard in Oakland. If they pull all police it does not affect me much. It will affect the locals. Just as pulling police in WC would be a negative for me if I lived in Walnut Creek. Even poor people do not want to live in crime zones but some people believe they be better are off living with crime because statistical policing is worse than no policing. I would disagree.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I'm all for police protecting citizens in crime zones. I imagine Walnut Creek is a lot like Marin County these days. My county has very little crime. We basically have east San Rafael, and Marin City. It seems like too many roving cops have made those two areas worse. Maybe instead of roaming around they just show up quick when called? As to the other 90% of my county, I can't even call them cops anymore. They are Revenue Collectors period. They drive around, hide behind hedges, and look for traffic violations, and most are minor.
tester34 5y ago
>How do you determine if the police are being successful? One of the things: How safe do you feel going from e.g pub/cinema/blabla to your home at 01:00? It's not perfect proxy, of course.
- xxs 5y ago
  >How safe do you feel going from e.g pub/cinema/blabla to your home at 01:00? This is an extremely low bar to clear. At least in these parts of the world street mugging is very uncommon. Yet, it has little to do with police work or presence.
automatic6131 5y ago
>One theory is that the function of the police is to maintain order, by which is meant the status quo. Police exist to make sure that white neighborhoods don't start to feel like black neighborhoods, and that black neighborhoods don't start to feel like white neighborhoods. You should get an athletics medal for that leap.

by geofft 5y ago

chuckee 5y ago

> Not only does this mean that police can very easily control crime statistics One could compare police statistics with victim surveys (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_Survey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Crime_Victimization_S...) to check how close they match. Or look at homicide statistics, that are not so easy to control. But then one could no longer dismiss all inconvenient data with a simple "the police are racist". So one keeps one's head in the sand and sticks to that line.

simion314 5y ago
For many crimes there might not be bodies to count. So I think that just from a math point of view(no race/social stuff interpretation) , you can be in a situation where the starting data combined with bad algorithm will keep you stuck in a local minimum. Probably math people can model this issue with abstract terms not to offend any color of politics you prefer but you have the issue of bad implementation and as always garbage in is garbage out, so you might need an algorithm that starts with zero input and uses random data and converges slowly , but you still need a way to make sure you keep the algorithm evolving with changes over large time (maybe reset it and make it start over after a few years)
eesmith 5y ago
Indeed, it opens up the topic to a wider question - why are some things counted as crimes and others not? For example, why isn't wage theft included in the NCVS? Surface-level answer: because in most jurisdictions, it's not a criminal offense. Steal $100 from your employer? Go to jail. Your employer requires unpaid overtime adding up to $1,000? A slap on the wrist at best. Yet employees are victims to billions of dollars of wage theft every year! "Sixty-eight percent of the surveyed workers experienced at least one pay-related violation in the week prior to the survey. On average the workers in the three cities lost a total of $2,634 annually due to workplace violations, out of an average income of $17,616, which translates into wage theft of fifteen percent of income." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_theft . Does the NCVS list that over half of employees are victims of wage theft? Why, it's almost as if the laws were structured against poor people in favor of business. Hmm, and ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the poor population. What about the illegal collusion between Silicon Valley companies to suppress worker wages? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L... . Were all 64,000 employees counted as victims in the NCVS? Again, no, because that was a civil suit, not a crime that the police should be involved in. But again, why is it under civil law, not criminal? (There's no hint that this wage theft is due to racism.) Or, were the events leading to the lead poisoning of the water of Flint, MI and its coverups a crime? If so, why isn't the population of Flint included as victims? If not, why not? Or, in discussions related to the 'school-prison nexus', when disproportionate disciplinary actions are taken against students of color, are those students counted as victims? Why or why not? You are correct. All this inconvenient data indeed makes people dismiss the 'simple "the police are racist"' and replace it with "the system is both racist and biased in favor of the rich".
- chuckee 5y ago
  A moment ago the conversation was about violent crime and "over-policing creates racist bias in crime data". Now it's about laws treating corporate crimes more leniently. You raise good points, and use them to deftly move past all the claims of racism that homicide statistics and victim surveys largely (but not entirely) refute.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

> Police exist to make sure that white neighborhoods don't start to feel like black neighborhoods, and that black neighborhoods don't start to feel like white neighborhoods. Ermmm.. what?

mc32 5y ago

All people ideally should live in places free of deleterious crime. If I live in Walnut Creek I don’t care what happens on international boulevard in Oakland. If they pull all police it does not affect me much. It will affect the locals. Just as pulling police in WC would be a negative for me if I lived in Walnut Creek. Even poor people do not want to live in crime zones but some people believe they be better are off living with crime because statistical policing is worse than no policing. I would disagree.

hellbannedguy 5y ago
I'm all for police protecting citizens in crime zones. I imagine Walnut Creek is a lot like Marin County these days. My county has very little crime. We basically have east San Rafael, and Marin City. It seems like too many roving cops have made those two areas worse. Maybe instead of roaming around they just show up quick when called? As to the other 90% of my county, I can't even call them cops anymore. They are Revenue Collectors period. They drive around, hide behind hedges, and look for traffic violations, and most are minor.

tester34 5y ago

>How do you determine if the police are being successful? One of the things: How safe do you feel going from e.g pub/cinema/blabla to your home at 01:00? It's not perfect proxy, of course.

xxs 5y ago
>How safe do you feel going from e.g pub/cinema/blabla to your home at 01:00? This is an extremely low bar to clear. At least in these parts of the world street mugging is very uncommon. Yet, it has little to do with police work or presence.

automatic6131 5y ago

>One theory is that the function of the police is to maintain order, by which is meant the status quo. Police exist to make sure that white neighborhoods don't start to feel like black neighborhoods, and that black neighborhoods don't start to feel like white neighborhoods. You should get an athletics medal for that leap.