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)
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Who knows...
Anyhow...
IBM? Tracking people deemed troublesome to people in government?
Invoking Godwin's Law in 3...2...1...
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IBM? Tracking people deemed troublesome to people in government? Invoking Godwin's Law in 3...2...1...
Yeah, that was one of my original thoughts. IBM really doesn't need this kind of PR. I grew up being told how IBM enabled the Holocaust, and they really don't need to bring that association to mind in a state with a large population of elderly Jews.
That said, there is a big difference between tracking random citizens and essentially creating a preliminary psychological profile of juvenile offenders. By and large, I don't mind taking fingerprints and DNA from people who have been convicted in a court of law.
Re:Just hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite the combined efforts of virtually every major consumer software vendor, Joe Public still somehow trusts computers and thinks of them as authoritative. DAs and prosecutors will absolutely eat that shit up, as will jurors.
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Except most juvenile cases are decided before a judge, not a jury.
In addition, IAAL and I've done plenty of Juvenile defense cases and I can tell you that some of these kids need extra help as early as possible. Far too often, the reason a kid stays in a life of crime into adulthood is because the juvenile justice system is ill-equipped and has their hands tied in how to properly deal with these cases.
I see this as a potentially positive thing... and this is coming from a juvenile defense attorney.
Re:Just hope... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Yea, except the founding fathers weren't going around robbing liquor stores
No, they were pillaging shipments of tea.
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You Brits are STILL sore about that aren't you? You and your bloody tea.
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So is there any gray area in this bad / good prediction business, or is it pretty much black and white?
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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:Just hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just hope... (Score:5, Informative)
If you raise them correctly, it isn't an issue.
Well, that's a chicken/egg deal, isn't it? Since you can't seem to imagine how uncertainty could exist in parenting, I'll assume you're not a parent. Personally I wonder if I'm too hard, too soft, too indifferent, too strict, too inconsistent. All parents would. There's not a play-book for everything an intelligent kid will throw at you, so a lot of time you're running no-huddle. Sometimes you screw up, and you roll with it and move on. Just like anything else, really.
That said, I'm not so consumed with hubris to believe that I, personally as their father, am the only influence on their lives. It could well be that I need to do something specific to counteract an influence that I'm not aware of, or that I trust isn't having a negative impact. I don't follow them to school, but I do talk to them after. But that only tells me what they think I want to hear, because they're humans.
Knowing if a computer thinks one or both of your kids may be prone to certain behavior should not affect how you raise your children.
Why exclude points of data? Again, you only have what you can take in through your own eyes and ears to work with. It isn't as if you get a report daily of all the things your kid doesn't want you to know about.
For example, my oldest son may or may not be walking laps around the playground by himself at this very moment, or helping the playground teachers enforce the rules on the other kids. We've discussed how important it is to not ostracize his friends, and I think he really does get it that now isn't the time to worry about being a teacher's aide. I'm encouraging him to have fun with his peers while he still can. In a few short years those carefree times on the playground will be gone.
Two questions:
1) What are my opportunities here? Or better put, how should I have predicted it and how can I correct it?
2) How do I know if he is taking my advice, or simply ignoring it? I'm at work, and can't directly supervise him daily. In the end, I'll have to take his word for it. Except he is just a kid. He doesn't really have the life experience necessary to identify what he is losing out on here.
There aren't really any clear answers in situations like this. If I push him too hard, he'll not want to be honest with me. If I ignore it, he'll probably make it into a fine mess for himself. He may come back in later years with a 'you were right, dad' but I don't want that. I want him to take advantage of every resource, as any father would for a kid he loves.
This is just one tiny facet with only one of my sons.
Parenting isn't easy, and it isn't innate. Criticize if you want to, because that's a chique thing to do on Slashdot, but I'm certain that I'm doing the best I can do, and it will never be good enough for my sons. You're going to have a tough time topping that much criticism. However, I'm also confident that neither you nor anyone else would do much better. It just isn't as easy as it looks on TV.
Raising a child right is raising a child right no matter what label IBM slaps on them.
Again, by what metric?
Which brings me back to...
You said "I'd either work like hell to change them or spy on them be the first to rat them out."
Bad parenting! You should never be concerned with "spying on and ratting out" your children
If I was made aware of a risk that I hadn't had the opportunity to intervene over, I'd do so in short order. If that didn't work, I'd try another method, or try harder. If THAT didn't work, I'd get help. If THAT ALSO doesn't work, I'll turn them over to the authorities myself.
It goes to control. If they are a risk to others, I'll use my resources against that risk. Police are amongst those. I just don't see where the gap lies here. Please clarify your sources, and share your insights.
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.
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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.
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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.
Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Which is all well and good if it works, and there are some decent prediction models and a whole lot of terrible ones.
It would be nice and comforting, as this thing moves along, if data about accuracy of the predictions was made available, but I doubt it will be.
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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:Self-fulfilling Prophecy? (Score:4, Funny)
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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. Doi
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Let's see. His treatment of prisoners has been ruled unconstitutional on multiple [blogspot.com] occasions [aclu.org]. He has raided [azcentral.com] an office of his own county without a warrant of any kind in order to seize emails that are to be used against him in court. His destruction of records has netted him a contempt [findlaw.com] sanction, and the FBI is investigating him for civil rights violations, intimidation of witnesses, etc.
These aren't idle accusations. They're at least serious enough to get the justice department involved. Even judges [azcentral.com] aren
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So are you suggesting that those with higher risk factors receive harsher punishment? or lesser?
One of the biggest risk factors in the "criminality" of someone may be having this program identify you as a likely criminal. It is well known that harsh punishments are very strongly correlated with subsequent social dysfunction.
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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.
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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
Flame war thread prediction (Score:5, Funny)
It's Florida. There's a reason for the tag in FARK (Score:5, Informative)
Florida is insane, in the same way that senile demented octogenarians are insane. They never think past tomorrow, because they don't know if they're going to live until tomorrow. All that matters is today, the pudding, and Matlock.
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Actually, this is not an "octogenarian" problem.
It is a problem of having bloated and pretty much do-nothing administration.
Disclaimer: I live in this hell-hole jokingly called "God's Waiting Room".
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If the past is any indication, Republicans seem to have a propensity towards killing abortion doctors, starting wars in foreign lands, and promoting the torture and killing of innocent foreign civilians.
FDR was which? And Truman? And Clinton? And Obama?
Since only Republicans ever order killings, I'm sure the Democrats will be sad to hear their political party has been absorbed.
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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.
Jeeze (Score:5, Funny)
You guys are being pretty hard on IBM. They're just providing computing and analytical power. You're acting like they collaborated with the Nazis or something.
The best part! (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Uh, we do not need analytics for that. If they work for the gov, and especially if they are politicians, they have a high probability of coruption in thier future. Especially open to bribes from big corporations like IBM...
Who's knocking on my door?
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.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Slim [wikipedia.org]
Yeah, I know. If you read the fine print he's 100% Lebanese. There are 7 others.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexican_billionaires [wikipedia.org]
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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...
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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
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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.
What could go wrong? (Score:2)
It seems that all the worst things in the movies "Demolition Man" and "Minority Report" are coming true, aren't they?
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.
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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.
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They should be looking at the external causes that make them act this way, if you're analysing those kids than you're already assuming that they're in some way defective or sad.
What are you talking about? They aren't testing the kids DNA. They are analyzing the behavior and environment of a child. Those are the externalities. Further, who said anything about blame? This is about rehabilitation for kids who have committed crimes.
Blame the parents not the children.
Blame them both and hold both legally accountable, just as we do now, based upon age and level of independence. When a 4 year old shoplifts, the parents are held entirely to blame and might even lose custody. When a 17 year old goes on a murder spree, havin
hmm (Score:3)
Are we sure that's all bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
I imagine that the software is a Bayesian filter that takes in lots of seemingly unrelated factors and combines them into a score. First, yeah, I get the obvious dystopian implications - I won't argue against the awful possibilities if it were widely deployed. That said, isn't it possible that it could genuinely help some kids? 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.
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?
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But that's not what's happening in our schools already; Just look at the Zero Tolerance statutes!
Oh, I hear you and I agree completely. Like so many other things done in the name of security, the downsides are a lot easier to see than any marginal advantages.
It all depends... (Score:5, Interesting)
This system seems to automate this process. So it is possible it will save money and produce better results than the current system, while still maintaining fairness. After all, if you have committed a crime, both the maximum and minimum penalties for what you did should be fair outcomes.
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That sounds pretty callous, but remember that previously the same thing was happening, only the slots were being assigned more arbitrarily, likely raising the recidivism rate in consequence, when "you
100% predictive: beat everyone, lock them up (Score:2)
What is the problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
Any reason why we are angry with this? The whole point appears to identify at-risk kids and make sure they get the support they need.
A: Kid is from a low income family
B: Kid lives in drug ridden neighborhood
C: Kid eats twice a day
D: Kid is in a single parent home
Kid is BLAH BLAH% likely to commit a violent crime.
A is 38% weighted
B: is 14% weighted
C: is 17% weighted
D: is 9% weighted
Per $ ROI indicates that an additional $4.22 spent weekly on school lunch program (C) will save $19.22 over 10 years in reduced criminal activity.
Blah blah blah...
Seems par for the course...
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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 th
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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 dispari
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.
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Nice ad hominem attack, but you do not refute anything he says.
Please explain in detail how he is wrong or STFU.
IBM has learned from their past work (Score:2)
The burn now or work to death and burn later camp lines.
Why not sort internal populations with more care?
Good kids get full scholarships.
If your part of the system you should be productive.
Stable kids get to join City Year.
Your useful and might still get that scholarship.
Big pharma has a chemical solution for the rest.
Feel happy working to death over decades.
Safer communities for all.
Ahh, good intentions all around I think (Score:2)
It's hard to get angry at a bunch of engineers and government civil servants taking the next logical step in pattern recognition. Everybody involved is just individually contributing to a possible aid in dealing with a social problem. Let's face it, the most widely damaging forms of "evil" are rarely done by "evil" people. The next question I would also have would be, "what is the back end in this particular predictive system?" Are the consequences for the identified person punitive or does he or she get th
As someone who is studying to be a teacher (Score:5, Interesting)
The average child's behavior does have the potential to reliably predict future social and behavior patterns for the individual; however, there are outliers of varying types who would not be well served by this attempt at divining the 'future history' of individual human beings. Here are some of the types I have noticed.
1. Situational issues such as abuse at home that cause anger, frustration and inappropriate behavior at school. Children's brains are luckily plastic enough to rewire themselves when presented with a new environment that is far more nurturing, safe and empowering.
2. Schools/Neighborhoods that have been left to become warrens of crime will produce children that seek criminal behavior to 'fit in', even if they are articulate and attentive in class they may be encountering overwhelming peer pressure to conform to another set of behaviors outside the classroom or face ostracization.
3. Mentally ill children who go unmedicated can be hellions the days they don't take their meds and perfectly reasonable mature human beings when they do. The flip side of this, is dealing with the many popular NT rich kids whose parents have gotten them adderall prescriptions babbling in the back of the classroom and acting hyper aggressive on the playground.
4. Police provoked violence/crimes. I did some student teaching in a High School which shall remain unnamed and the MO of the high school police was to find the 'troublemakers' smoking cigarettes across from the school or in the alleyways surrounding and set up a cop car on one side of them and try to herd them towards it, if they ran they tried to take them down with tackling and submission holds. The kids got suspended and charged with resisting arrest at the very least some got thrown in Juvi all for smoking a cig and being confronted by a dickish bunch of cops.
SPSS since 1968!!! (Score:3, Informative)
I'd guess Slashdot geeks would really like it since you can program some nice stuff in a pseudo SQL script language (I don't know the name of it), but if you've ever seen it you'll know that SYSMIS sorta means NULL.
Wrong movie/book to invoke (Score:5, Interesting)
Gizmodo links this technology to Minority Report, and certainly not without cause, but the movie that really ought to worry you here is Gattaca. What happens to kids this software flags with a high potential for future criminal activity? If companies start taking this data seriously, a lot of them won't be hiring these kids. And while it was genetics that was the profiling mechanism in Gattaca, considering we've already cracked the human genome, it can only be a matter of time before someone decides to take a similar piece of software and run it against someone's DNA.
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TFA says that these kids being analyzed have already been convicted of crimes. They may have trouble getting hired with or without the software, because they've already elected to be delinquent.
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.
Why is this wrong? (Score:2)
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If a state has thousands of young offenders on file with necessary criminal & rehabilitation data to make predictions of future behaviour, why shouldn't they do it?
Exactly. And if some anomalous data comes down the pipe showing the prediction may have been wrong for some child who was locked away due to being convicted of pre-crime all we have to do is bury the minority report.
Voting records (Score:2)
Look at all the FUD (Score:2)
Let's see. Florida is going to use statistical software to try to identify children, who have already committed crimes, who are most likely to continue to commit, most-likely more serious, crimes and prevent them from going down that path through intervention services such as mentoring, counseling, and community control.
Yes, what a horrible thing to take kids who have started down the path of a criminal life and trying to improve their lives and keep them from committing crimes, becoming drug addicts, and g
Early 70's Axiometrics (Score:3, Interesting)
This was almost attempted in the early 70's. Look up the "Hartman Value Profile". It was shot down in flames, I guess the concept of Civil Rights has changed a bit since then . . .
Triage (Score:2)
When a hospital does this, they call it triage, and there is no outrage.
If we take as given that resources are finite, then not every case of juvenile delinquency can get the full service treatment, so we must find a way to allocate resources efficiently. The point of this analysis is to estimate which cases need more intervention, and which need less.
The teenager that is having problems with his girlfriend and acts out by picking a fight, or damaging some property, or whatever, is probably going to be fin
Reactions (and TFA) ill-informed & reactionary (Score:4, Informative)
Now, consider IBM's press release [ibm.com], which seems to be the only news available on this subject, and is certainly the unlinked source of Gizmodo's fit. Previously, Florida State officials were using Excel macros to sort convicted juvenile offenders into different programs, and now they will use IBM's software to do it. Whether Florida's juvenile prosecutions or unjust or not, whether their programs are effective or not, has no bearing on IBM's part in this.
IBM has sold Florida some statistical analysis software, which they will (apparently) use to stick heavy offenders into more punitive detention programs, saving the spaces in more rehabilitative programs for newer offenders. You may think that that policy is ill-advised as well--but it is perfectly legal. At least the sorting will be (hopefully) less capricious than it was before. IBM is certainly not enabling Florida to enforce "pre-crimes" or anything of the sort. This is not even affecting the judicial sentences. Everyone being analyzed here has already been found guilty by a court.
Prior to predictive analytics, the organization used Excel for basic analysis on projections for the number of delinquency cases they would take in, which had limited functionality. They selected IBM SPSS predictive analytics due to the ease of use and the advanced analytic capabilities.
The organization will now utilize the new predictive analytics system as a component in many of the performance measurement analyses conducted and distributed to agency staff throughout the year. These reports assess the future of delinquency cases to evaluate what juvenile crime trends may look like in the immediate future. This information will help the organization to better plan and project staffing and other resource needs.
IBM recently also announced that the Ministry of Justice in the United Kingdom uses predictive analytics to assess the likelihood of prisoners reoffending upon their release to help improve public safety. With predictive technology from IBM, the Ministry of Justice is analyzing hidden trends and patterns within the data. IBM SPSS predictive analytics has helped identify whether offenders with specific problems such as drug and alcohol misuse are more likely to reoffend than other prisoners.
It sounds like the Ministry of Justice might have something a bit more Orwellian (notice "public safety") in mind, but that will be a story for another day. Now take a deep breath, and control yourselves next time Kdawson posts a link to an inflammatory and ill-informed opinion piece. A worthier title for this event might have been "IBM enables Florida Juvenile Detention System to Become Slightly Less Cruel and Arbitrary."
Generational Gap (Score:2)
Passing judgments, no matter how much data is processed to make the decision, will be inaccurate if the writers don't have full understanding of the juvenile delinquents being judged. There always seem to be assumptions about how to interact with youth that make perfect sense to adults but result in nonsensical interaction with the children. On the rare occasion that the child tries to inform the adult of a false assumption or possible miscommunication, it's usually misinterpreted as the child not understan
What about Old People (Score:2)
They should be using the software to identify politician and bankers and smother them in their cribs...
Oh, oh, they did not mean THOSE people, we liked Bernie Madoff, even if we ripped off of a couple of billion dollars from people.
Its those bored youths who are destroying society. The ones we refuse to build parks, community centers, or have any organized activities for these kids to do so they are bored and cause trouble.
*END SARCASM*
breathtaking (Score:2)
IBM wants to make money off the US police state by setting up this big brother, pre-crime-ware and all the while they shed 5% - 8% of their US workforce each year.
Bogus Article - I'm in the industry (Score:5, Informative)
Let me get this off my chest first: Jesus Diaz (the Gizmodo writer) is an idiot of the most supreme caliber. His MO on the Gizmodo is to write ill-researched inflammatory articles. Over time I have figured that these must be written solely to stir up internet frenzy and increase page views. More power to him, but it automatically disadvantages his opinions for me.
Now that the ad-hominem is out of the way, let me get to the meat of it. The conclusions here are 100% wrong. What we do is provide Juvenile Justice departments (which is almost always Juvenile Probation) with tools, in the form of academically validated models, that help them determine which kids are at highest risk to re-offend. We're also able to determine, with a high degree of accuracy (thank you academia!) what the kids biggest needs areas are.
So how does all of this information actually get used? It turns out that it's used in amazingly great ways. It helps keep children placed in their own homes, not in residential treatment, juvenile hall, or the state's Youth Authority. We've had jurisdictions report out-of-home placements drop by 50% after implementing our tools. It also means that a Probation Officer can focus on kids that are at a high risk to re-offend, and have minimal contact with kids that are at a low risk to re-offend. As it turns out, the PHds that come up with these tools are able to determine that having lots of contact with the criminal justice system is bad for kids that are low risk - so it really helps to know the kids that minimal intervention is the best path for. Another benefit of this sort of classification scheme (which works just as well for adults) is that the officers (who are time constrained) are able to spend more time with their higher risk kids because they aren't spending as much time with their low risk kids. This probably seems obvious to most readers, but I'm surprised by the number of commenters that don't get that last point.
My final point is that these kids are already getting put into treatment programs, like anger management, or drug counseling, or teenage parent classes. That happens regardless of whether or not a jurisdiction uses software like ours. What this type of analytic software does is help take away the "gut instinct" part of program placement and give the officer a little more guidance into what programs will be most effective. If you can only send a kid to one program, why make it an anger management class when, after an assessment, you are able to determine that it's actually his drug use and poor school attendance that are his biggest risk factors?
So in the end, this isn't about pre-crime, or thought-crime, or any sort of Orwellian conspiracy. It is, quite literally, about helping place minors (and adults) that have already committed crimes against people or their community, into programs that have the statistically best chance of helping them not commit another crime. The best part is, the followup data from jurisdictions using this type of software suggests that it works, with fewer placements and less recidivism.
Oh, and Jesus Diaz is a idiot (man that feels good.)
Devil's Advocate (Score:3, Interesting)
And why should the government decide who goes to an specific prevention program or who doesn't based on what a computer says? The fact is that, even if the software was 99.99% accurate, there will be always an innocent person who will be F***ed. And that is exactly why we have something called due process and the presumption of innocence. That's why those things are not only in the United States Constitution, but in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights too.
Nice rant and straw man. They're not talking about throwing these kids in jail. Instead, targetting people at higher risk of following a criminal path, and giving them extra efforts to steer them from that path.
ISure. Some will argue that these juvenile delinquents were already convicted for other crimes, so hey, there's no harm. This software will help prevent further crimes. It will make all of us safer? But would it? Where's the guarantee of that? Why does the state have to assume that criminal behavior is a given?
Why would you naively assume that criminal behavior is no more likely among a population so identified than among the rest of the population? They're not just throwing allof the state's youth into the system to churn out who the "defectives" are. These are people who have a) already started down a criminal path or b) come from homes so screwed up that they had to be removed for their own safety. Statistically, both of these groups have a considerably reduced chance of a normal life. If there's a reliable means of figuring out which subset of those groups are more prone than others, and to take active steps to help them prevent it, why would you not do it? Why would you don the rose-colored glasses and pretend that they can just step out of Juvie and lead a fully normal life, when the odds are stacked against it?
Ok, I've got my flame-retardant suit on. Let's have it...
This can be a good thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets actually think about this instead of just coming up with reasons to force it into are preconceived notions.
If there are a set of factors to indicate risk, then this can be a good thing.
Steps can be taken to changing factors and reduce risk.
For example: One factor could be determine by a lack of social skills. That child could be taught the normal social behaviours. Improving the child's life as an adult. No we are not talking about making everyone the same. Another example, there is a strong correlation between torturing animals and being a psychopath. If you find you child torturing animals, then you should get help for that child. Before you pound you meat stumps against the key board, I am not saying torturing animals causes it, only that it's a sign, so put away your misguided 'correlation is no causation' standard reply, it does not apply here.
I know minority report is a fun comparison, but the movies response to 'pre-crime' is nonsense. Plus that's not what we are talking about.
Weed out the revolutionaries (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:Thoughtcrime (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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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
Re:Only useful when analyzing groups (Score:5, Informative)
Re:History repeats again ... (Score:4, Funny)
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That's great! Because a single isolated counter-example will totally bring the system crashing to halt in twenty or thirty years.
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do you really think this will be used to give positive attention to children who are at a high risk of becoming offenders?
More likely it will lead to stiffer juvenile penalties for high risk kids. Punishing them based on what we believe they might do in the future.