Innocent Until Predicted Guilty 430
theodp writes "Gizmodo has an angry piece on IBM helping Florida to predict how delinquent your child's going to be. The Florida Department of Juvenile Justice has decided to start using IBM predictive analytics software to help them determine which of the 85,000 kids who enter their system each year poses the biggest future threat. From IBM's sales pitch: 'Predictive analytics gives government organizations worldwide a highly-sophisticated and intelligent source to create safer communities by identifying, predicting, responding to and preventing criminal activities. It gives the criminal justice system the ability to draw upon the wealth of data available to detect patterns, make reliable projections and then take the appropriate action in real time to combat crime and protect citizens.'"
Just hope... (Score:2, Insightful)
Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:5, Insightful)
The best part! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who knows...
Anyhow...
IBM? Tracking people deemed troublesome to people in government?
Invoking Godwin's Law in 3...2...1...
Does it work for white collar crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do predictive analytics work for other demographics as well, e.g. middle aged white man from prominent Ivy League university running an energy company more likely to steal billions of dollars over young Latino kid living in downtown Miami?
I know just where to use it first... (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the best use of this technology is as a means for monitoring our government officials and representatives (starting with the folks thinking about using it here.) It is arguable that the harm done by the average juvenile delinquent pales in comparison to the social and economic harm done by politicians and lawless officials. We should be using predictive technology keep them in check, and ensure that liberty is being preserved for future generations...
Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Only useful when analyzing groups (Score:3, Insightful)
Overblown (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, all I see here is a slippery slope argument. Juvenile delinquents who have been convicted of a crime are generally sentenced to probation, attendance in educational programs, counseling, etc. The only difference here is now they're using computer models to decide which programs are most appropriate for a given youth based upon the data they put in... instead of the court making the decision based upon a less complete set of data and a less methodical prediction of what would work best for that individual.
Now I'm not saying IBM's system works. It may or may not and that needs to be carefully studied. I have no problem, however, with computer models being used to determine which juvenile delinquents are most likely to benefit from specific programs and which are most in need of them when resources are limited. Appeals to various constitutional amendments are just empty rhetoric, given these kids have been convicted of a crime and this is part of their rehabilitation. In fact this whole article looks like an excuse for sensationalism and a reason to display cool graphics from "Minority Report". Lame Mr. Diaz.
Re:Only useful when analyzing groups (Score:3, Insightful)
Luckily, the people most likely to be (questionably accurately) judged to be pre-crime risks are likely to be members of more or less unsympathetic and disliked groups, so the people who actually count won't much care whether you are accurate or not. If anything, the "good upstanding citizens" will howl with rage and demand that they tolerance for false positives be increased every time the blood-spattered story of a false negative hits the cable news...
Re:What could go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sandra Bullock and Tom Cruise are doing a movie together? I'm not sure my gag reflex is strong enough for that.
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:4, Insightful)
It can probably be helpful in the same vein as the patriot act, warrant-less wiretapping, and many other government uber-powers.
Re:I know just where to use it first... (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no amount of accumulated data that will tell them which people are capable and willing to change their behavior so that they can be an integral part of society.
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:5, Insightful)
A disturbing number of people seem to operate on the belief that there are two kinds of defendants: "Guilty" and "Guilty; but goddam liberal bleeding hear trial lawyers got them off on a technicality".
Re:Are we sure that's all bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose those factors like increased absences and a couple of minor contacts with police indicate that Johnny is extremely likely to drop out of school. Maybe that's a good hint that someone needs to talk to Johnny and see if something correctable is going on in his life.
But that's not what's happening in our schools already; Just look at the Zero Tolerance statutes!
Do you really think that the same people who would expel a 9th grade girl for bringing a butter knife to school [go.com] can be trusted to be rational with this kind of information?
Re:Does it work for white collar crime? (Score:5, Insightful)
If they had a database of hundreds or thousands of Ivy League Energy Company-running Billion-Dollar embezzlers to get statistically relevant information from, then yes. It may be slower to build that predictive database than to build the Street Kid From Miami database, not because of racial considerations, but because of number of incidents recorded.
For the Ivy League guy, we need a more classical predictive model: "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." The algorithms will come eventually.
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:5, Insightful)
I can do that without giving IBM millions of dollars.
Its called nurturing, education and providing the opportunity to succeed.
Better a machine... (Score:3, Insightful)
N.B. This obviously has the potential for misuse (e.g. the first time some political hack suggests it is great for preemption.), but it is not a prima facie violation of individual's rights.
Eternal Vigilance, etc.
Re:I know just where to use it first... (Score:3, Insightful)
You have a point. FL's been rocked by a number of scandals where Human Services employees repeated failed to check on foster kids and the kids were starved or beaten to death. Sounds like predictive software should be used to predict which HS employees are failing to do their job.
Re:Just hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just hope your child doesn't fall into the minority report.
If one or both of my sons are prone to be a criminal, I'd be glad to see it on a report before it happened.
I'd either work like hell to change them or spy on them be the first to rat them out.
I don't want my sons in jail, but more so I don't want my sons harming society, killing other sons and daughters, etc. I brought them into this world, and they're (at least somewhat) my responsibility.
Re:What is the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we really need a computer program to tell us that kids who are growing up in inner city neighborhoods surrounded by drugs and crime need more support?
I'm pretty sure we know that now, and we don't give them the support they need.
The fear with regard to this system is that it will lead to punishing first time offenders more harshly if they are high risk. The first time someone who set off a "high risk" trigger gets out of his first offense counciling and goes on to commit a violent crime the media and the public will be outraged that we didn't do more to prevent it (ie lock them up long term).
This software could be useful but it is not an answer to the social problem we have right now; That we don't give support to high risk minority kids and that we prefer to incarcerate them when possible.
Re:What could go wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Predicting whether a kid will be a Republican. (Score:3, Insightful)
People are criminals. Republican, Democrat, bullshit. You ever speed? Criminal. You ever not come to a 100% complete stop before advancing past a stop sign? Criminal. Smoke weed? Criminal. Drink before the age of 21? Criminal.
Laws exist to make us criminals. We all are. We just get away with our crimes until we piss off the wrong people.
Re:What is the problem? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes we do because we need to find out the real statistical weight (significance) of which regressors gives us the best return on our money.
An excellent real world example is the disparity in blacks for sentencing. We find that it is more statstically significant that the reasons black comprise more of the prision population isn't because they are black per say, it just happens that blacks comprise more of the lower income. Income is more significant then just being black so if you want to reduce the disparity in sentencing, dollar for dollar you are better off spending money on improving job opportunities then say, sensitivity training for prosecutors.
The point of using computer systems is to dig through bias and perceptions and get to a root cause.
In the case of youth intervention it comes down to finding out which circumstances are the most relevant and addressable. Yeah we know of about 4000 regressors that factor into a child's success... it's finding out which of the 4000 we can address and which of those not only help the child, but save us money rather then just subsidize bad behaviors.
The fear is unfounded since it wouldn't be admissible in sentencing guidelines, no more then a genetic predisposition would be. The courts are pretty clear on what can be taken into account in sentencing and none of this would be allow to be factored in under existing laws and guidelines. Even if they tried it wouldn't make it past an appeal, (IANALBMWIAP)
This is for kids ALREADY in the justice system (Score:2, Insightful)
They are actually trying to use some actual data to try to direct these kids within the justice system. That's not such a terrible thing - in fact, it's what people in the system who are trying to do the right thing are trying to do - get kids the help they need to save their future. Like anybody, I would hope that the software is not blindly relied upon, but the people in the system are still going to be there. It's pretty hard right now to fight for a kid to get the attention they need and be directed the way they should in that system. Because these are kids who are already being judged by the law, there's not really any worse situation they can get into. They can already have a judge or caseworker who arbitrarily hates them, or who wants to help them. The factors for re-offending are already being examined, it's just that now some software can spit out a report based on these factors.
There's not much to see here.
Re:Just hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:3, Insightful)
It has already been shown that informing teachers that students scored high or low on a fake predictive test will cause a significant change in test scores, so I imagine that this will probably work, regardless of the predictive ability of the system.
Cops will spend more time in these areas and less likely to let identified people off on a warning, thus arrests will be higher even with the same crime rate, which leads to more court cases, more convictions, perhaps higher sentences to "crack down" on "known recidivists", etc.
Re:Just hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a thought, let IBM try it out on their own executives first. After it gets through nailing the miscreant executives in its own ranks, the U.S. Justice dept will evaluate it and see if it might be used on Wall Street firms. It must successfully weed out the Business School Product that wasted the U.S. economy first. The next test will be to try it out on the designers of this valuable product. If it catches the social misfits that have worked on this software, then maybe the U.S. could consider it for kids. However, we'll want to see a cleaned up IBM, Wall Street, and developer ranks first.
Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is exactly what judges and parole officers do today using guesswork and Kentucky windage. I think it's hard to maintain that making that process more objective and automated is a bad thing.
Of course, there's potential for abuse through its misapplication to other areas.
Re:What is the problem? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the reason why this strikes a discordant note is that no one wants to be "labeled" by a machine no matter how sophisticated. Most, I think, want a human in the loop. Even then the mechanistic idea that humans can be categorized to predict future behavior seems so wrong even if it is necessary if we are to control social problems.
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:3, Insightful)
As for Sheriff Joe, if people break the law (enter the country illegally) shouldn't the law enforcement officials arrest them and detain them?
Short answer: nope.
Long answer: should the county sheriff also enforce Federal laws on copyright? What about Federal banking regulations? Want the county sheriff to review your income tax return and make sure you're not claiming too many deductions? Maybe he can have his deputies kick in the doors at a research hospital that isn't compliant with FDA requirements on drug testing?
The local authorities should focus on enforcing the laws of their locality, not every single law that's on the books somewhere. Doing so is just a waste of scarce resources.
Re:Just hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have trouble believing you're so unimaginative as to assume that there is not more than one way to 'do all you can do'.
'Being an involved parent' isn't some kind of magic bullet. Involved how? In what? To what extent?
I care enough to ask these questions, as all good parents do.
Ad hominim attacks on parents are spiffy and all, but please be specific, if you can.
Re:Just hope... (Score:2, Insightful)
The way I see it, it's the same as anything else, with potential for either good or bad use. In the particular program being mentioned, it looks like it's a pretty positive thing.
1. It only comes into the picture after a conviction.
2. The focus seems to be on determining how best to help the person, not how much to punish them.
If they were using it for *severity* of sentencing, or as an aid to conviction, or even for filtering suspect lists, I think it would be questionable at best.
Re:Just hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
If he spent half as much time parenting his kids as he did crafting this response, his kids would disown him.
The problem is that the problem is incredibly organic and constantly changing and moving. You push one corner, and the problem space takes on a completely different shape. As a parent, we are blamed for situations completely out of our control. We're blamed if we don't make enough money to provide the toys that other kids have. We're blamed if we work to much. We're blamed for being invasive if we spend to much time with with our kids. We're blamed for being absent if we try to give them space. It doesn't matter. Until the boy hits 25yrs of age, I'm wrong.
Sometimes, we have to hit /. just to keep our sanity. It reminds us of how ridiculous our children COULD be.
Weed out the revolutionaries (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Just hope... (Score:2, Insightful)
'Being an involved parent' isn't some kind of magic bullet.
Actually, it is. There are a fucking TON of parents out there that throw fast food and TV at their kids and that's where the parenting stops. Such parenting causes a lot of problems.