Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes 244
An anonymous reader writes: Using profiling algorithms, police are tracking suspected criminals to prevent them from committing predicted crimes. We're one step from locking people up for what they might do. The New York Times reports: "The strategy, known as predictive policing, combines elements of traditional policing, like increased attention to crime “hot spots” and close monitoring of recent parolees. But it often also uses other data, including information about friendships, social media activity and drug use, to identify “hot people” and aid the authorities in forecasting crime."
Minority report. (Score:5, Informative)
I've already seen this movie, And I think its a tv series now too.
Re:Minority report. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is another salient movie about this... NEXT, in which "Frank Cadillac" says "Each time you look at the future, it changes"
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Re:Minority report. (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, the TV series more directly addresses this idea than the movie. In the movie, the Precogs saw visions of the future, and the police acted upon those specific visions.
In the TV series, which takes place ten years after the Precrime division was disbanded, the politician presently running for office is lobbying to implement a system similar to the one described in the summary - using data mining and analysis to predict crime using raw data. The difference between then and now, however, is the amount of data being pervasively collected.
Re:Minority report. (Score:5, Insightful)
And none of the movies looks to underlying factors, like poverty, addiction, mental cases with weapons, peer pressures, gang influences, inability to buy legal help/get actual justice, etc.
The PreCrime motives are unconstitutional, although conspiracy is fair game.
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Do electoral candidates risk getting covered or does that automatically get you a free pass?
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It's been a TV show for five years now [imdb.com]. And i doubt this will work as well as it did there.
Psycho-Pass (Score:2)
No, it should be Psycho-Pass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
They are measuring (poorly) people's Crime Coefficient to focus on the potential criminals.
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Old news, we've been doing it for ages. It's called "arrested for resisting arrest".
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TV show (pilot so far) sucked though. :(
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Minority Report (Score:1)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(TV_series)
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
I cannot see anything that could possibly go wrong with this idea, except for everything.
Can't wait until it's hacked and they start arresting the police chief, the city council, and everyone with a zip code that begins with a letter or a number.
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But what will really bake your noodle is, if the system works, and it pinpoints hackers planning to hack it as criminals, does it still get hacked?
I rate that possibility as somewhere around 0.00000000000000000002%.
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Not if the hackers aren't aware of what they are doing. If someone were to mask their intent as a game of sorts, we could enlist some of the most skilled individuals normally incapable of doing anything outside of standard orders.
Think like giving a soldier a weapon and orders to kill defenseless children, only wrapping up killing children under the premise that they are just playing a sick and twisted version of Grand Theft Auto.
If that doesn't work, we just keep layering the attacks until the system tryi
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LOL - an even better tool for script kiddies than "SWATing".
They'll be "MinorityReporting" people in no time!
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Can't wait until it's hacked and they start arresting the police chief...
Well, that would be nice if the cops pointed this program at themselves and root out those who are most likely to commit crimes against us. It would probably empty out the department though.
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Can't wait until it's hacked and they start arresting the police chief...
Well, that would be nice if the cops pointed this program at themselves and root out those who are most likely to commit crimes against us. It would probably empty out the department though.
Easily fixed:
if(subject_is_a_cop){
return 0;
}
Ah, yet again... (Score:2)
To quote Eddie Izzard, himself paraphrasing someone else:
(running to one side of the stage)
"I've got a new idea, I've got a new idea..."
(turning, and running away in the other direction)
"IT'S THE SAME IDEA! IT'S THE SAME IDEA!"
The ability to predict crime has been the holy grail of law enforcement for over a century now. They've tried psychology, sociology, biology...even phrenology...to try and point the finger at people and say "Yep, that guy's gonna commit some crime; let's harass the living fuck out o
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I just finished reading "The Terror Factory" by Trevor Aaronson and it describes in detail how since 9/11 the FBI has been using informants to induce (or entrap, depending on how you look at it) people on the fringes of society to commit crimes. In some cases the targets were so incompetent that they couldn't be trusted to tie their own shoelaces without fucking it up at least twice. People who are no threat at all to societyl, and haven't actually committed any crimes (though they may have thought about it
Time to Stop with Political Correctness (Score:5, Funny)
Okay, folks, it is time to get rid of the political correctness and call a spade a spade.
There is one group of Americans who cause the vast majority of violent crimes in the United States. They commit a disproportionately large amount of homicides and make up a vastly disproportionate amount of the people in prisons across the country.
They are responsible for being a majority of drug offenders. They cause most fights in schools and make up the vast, vast majority of high school drop outs.
They are also responsible for a vastly disproportionate amount of DUIs.
But political correctness will not allow us to talk about this problem. If we simply locked up this part of society, we'd all be better off.
And I think we all know what group this is.
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Males. Lock 'em all up and throw away the key.
Re:Time to Stop with Political Correctness (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me guess... you're talking about politicians?
Re:Time to Stop with Political Correctness (Score:5, Funny)
It is always fun to rile up the racists... now getting you to think is something I have yet to figure out how to do...
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I wouldn't call someone who can read plain crime data a racist. You can argue all day along about the social reasons WHY crime data says what it says, and the GP may very well BE a racist, but the statement, as it stands, is factually correct. Unfortunately, people who aren't racists and simply want to point out facts will be immediately bundled in with KKK members for stating simple, plain truths. Go Political Correctness!
Really? I'll take your word on Blacks, since their troubles are well known (not trying to be racist here; the Black community has been getting a raw deal in America for at least 300 years). Do you have stats on Mexicans' crime rates?
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Turn that rap shit off. That's a good start.
Yeah, why can't they play proper white music like jazz or rock n roll? Oh, wait...
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What about confounding factors? Some races are likelier to be poor. Some races are likelier to be hassled by police and others for looking the wrong skin color^W^W^W^W suspicious. Is the percentage of [race] that get found with something when searched the greater than the percentage of the average population to have something when searched?
Note also that this has all the makings of a self-fulfilling prophesy: Race X gets searched more often, and therefore is more often found with something illegal. Now, a s
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Funny but seriously why is preventing the crime through intervention never a solution. If you know someone is poor and unemployed and likely to start robbing them maybe we can provide them with services to become skilled and get a job. Jeez at least feed the poor guy. We will anyway if he's incarcerated.
"I said the police were powerless to help you, not punish you."
Sorry, we don't really help people in America. We are happy to punish you if you step out of line, but to extend a helping hand? Sounds like welfare and Socialism to me! People have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, just like all those rich, successful folks did! They did it, why can't everyone? Must be some moral failing, I tell ya! Lock 'em up before they come for my stuff!
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Privatized prisons demand the same payment regardless of the number of inmates. It's based on the number of beds instead, or it's per facility. So the incremental cost of incarcerating one more person is negligible. Over the long term, in aggregate, it can get expensive, but the cost of prisoner N+1 tends to be pretty small.
Prison labor programs offer large companies the opportunity to get labor at negligible cost and workers who are not legally able to leave or unionize. Whole Foods uses prisoners to grow
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If you actually mentioned certain other groups associated with such things, your post would be labled -1 troll for bigotry.. but since you said 'males', everyone yucks it up and votes you +5 funny. Unintentionally (or perhaps intentionally?), you highlighted the systemic cultural bias against men.
MRA alert - you are now entering the Twilight Zone, and I'm not talking about sparkly vampires.
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Selection bias (Score:5, Insightful)
Their tool only works (if at all) on certain categories of crime. It misses huge ones, particularly those in which the people in power engage:
* CIA torture.
* CIA, NSA, FBI, and police violations of the Constitution.
* CIA perjury to Congress.
* Bank executives' racketeering in regards to mortgage origination.
I'd pay good money for a tool to detect those kinds of crimes, and to see them properly prosecuted.
You just used the method in your example! (Score:2)
In the article one of the critics describes the general approach as:
âoeBecause you live in a certain neighborhood or hang out with certain people, we are now going to be suspicious of you"
So it's suspicion based on who you associate with. If you hang out with gang members, you might act like a gang member.
Notice you called it "NSA, CIA, and FBI violations of the Constitution ". You didn't ascribe those crimes to isolated individuals. Instead, you're suggesting that many people involved the NSA have
Actually the Court ruled it was ILLEGAL (Score:2)
> As what was done was deemed legal
Actually it was ruled ILLEGAL.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/05/07/... [cnn.com]
The ruling came a month before the Patriot Act was set to expire anyway, so the court chose to delay enforcement of the ruling while Congress decided what, if any, surveillance to authorize in some new law. In other words, the court could have said:
"That's illegal. You must stop, and here are the details of what you must do and what you must not do ... You have 30 days to comply."
Instead, the court ruled:
"T
Pauley's ruling was overturned on appeal (Score:2)
You've cited three cases, none of which support your claim.
One ruling that those specific plaintiffs hadn't shown standing to sue. That case didn't reach the legality of the program- the discussion didn't that far.
Another citation you provided was what I mentioned- the court declined a motion for an order of the court ordering changes to the program because Congress was voting on those details. The court didn't say it was okay, the court said the judge didn't need to determine the details of how to fix
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Again APK, I don't post as an AC, you do, don't try to act like I am using your technique on you.
You are the one who schizophrenicly posts agreeing with yourself, not I.
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I've developed my own algorithm for determining if these people are covering up crimes.
It tracks lip movements, if there are any, they're covering up crimes.
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You may have a point, but you know, if law enforcement isn't having to bust as many small-time perps, maybe they will have some time to deal with the bigger fish.
After all, we need cops to deal with domestic disturbances and robberies and such. If you could simply reassign some of the units busting those crimes to something else, you might see it affect the enforcement of other laws as well. Most cops aren't in the business to crack heads. They can get jumpy and shooty because they feel in danger or beco
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He buys a gun and starts hanging out near the defendant (all realistically trackable by an algorithm collecting records & gps data), what is an appropriate response, if any?
I think it is perfectly reasonable for the police, in such a situation, to talk to the person who is stalking the killer of his wife to advise him that he is going to be suspect number one if the guy winds up dead from a gunshot wound. I also think it is perfectly reasonable for the police to drive through the neighborhood on a regular basis, keeping an eye out for the "clean record" man's car and to let him know that they're watching.
"Stalking" is a crime in many, if not most, places, and the threat is p
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It seems in the last 5-10 years most people have started carrying a GPS receiver most places they go. Accessing this data currently requires a warrant, but is theoretically possible given the nature of the system being described.
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Or just track their cell phones.
Yes, this is the "GPS receiver" that most people carry that the other poster was referring to. I carry two, typically, both not enabled.
It required a warrant to get the cellular tracking data, or a signed statement that the data is needed for emergency (safety of life) purposes. And the latter only gets you the current location, not a track.
Gut fermentation syndrome (Score:2)
unless somebody can show they got drunk against their will
Yeah, it's not like the majority of drivers have a yeast infection in the stomach [cnn.com]. A Texas man blew an estimated 0.37% BAC in the ER after not having had a sip of alcoholic beverage.
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The vehicular manslaughter as a felony leading to a murder charge would fall under double jeopardy. You would have to show him committing another felony, and I don't think drunk driving is a felony
Great idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this sounds like a wonderful idea. I propose as a test that we use it on police departments to try and determine those officers that are most likely to abuse citizens. If it is successful in dropping those number significantly then we can talk about maybe trying it out on citizens.
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Pretty easy, based on criminal records... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you've committed a crime, it's more likely that you, rather than someone who has never committed a crime, will commit the next crime. The term is "recidivism."
If you've never committed a crime, I think it's about a 3% chance you'll commit a serious one. (http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet) However, if you have committed a serious crime, you'll about 40% likely to commit another serious one within 3 years. (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/recidivism_and_mental_illness_iowa_s_central_pharmacy_pilot_project_is_an.html)
Re:Pretty easy, based on criminal records... (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of parolees are placed at a serioius disadvantage though.
- Have trouble getting a job due to a record.
- Often have to pay ridiculously high fines and "fees" related to their processing and incarceration
- Rarely get good medical treatment for addictions.
- Were often forced into the system by a plea deal
If we are serious about preventing recidivism, we would lay better foundations for helping these people become productive members of society.
Sadly, the reality is that our society prays upon those least able to defend themselves. No one wants to stand up for a convicted ______.
Here's a link about the "fees" http://nation.time.com/2013/08... [time.com]
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Some recidivism may be due to an inherent "criminal nature", but it sure seems like a good chunk of it is due to getting put back out on the street with a record that makes it impossible to get any kind of a decent job or stable housing, which in turn often forces offenders back into the same environment they came from, surrounded by the same people and situations that contributed (not caused) to their criminal activity to begin with.
I don't know if it's true or not, but isn't murder one of those crimes tha
Wrong (Score:2)
No, the term is "Puritanism", meaning once a criminal, always a criminal (especially if you ain't UMC white), with ZERO chance of going straight as the entire society is arrayed against you. You can't live (rentals only) in vast swaths of the country because you will only be ever hired (if at all) at the worst, lowest type of jobs reserved for t
Re:Pretty easy, based on criminal records... (Score:4, Informative)
>> evidence that we catch (and convict) a representative sample of criminals
You might be looking for something called "clearance" (what percentage of crimes are resolved) and it's tracked by type of crime, region of country, size of population center, etc.
e.g., https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/c... [fbi.gov]
Good News! (Score:2)
Mentioned this recently... (Score:2)
been done elsewhere for decades (Score:2)
people spy on each other and report their neighbor, police spy on everyone: Soviet Union, Nazi Germany etc.
USA is following a well worn path
Lets just cut the bullshit (Score:2)
Lets just cut the bullshit. Here we go, when a white male turns 18 he gets randomly sentenced from 10 to 20 years in prison. A black male gets 20 to 40 years and a Hispanic male gets 20 to 50.
A women will get a random sentence from 5 to 10 years regardless of race.
There that should do it. I think I covered police prejudices in my assessment quite nicely. Address all present and future crimes all in one setting
if that doesn't work lets just send the police out to collect any random person they
I predict (Score:2)
I predict that the police will abuse this.
perhaps they should use this tech on their own selves first.
Here is the code they're using (Score:2)
IF (black) AND IF (shitty_neighborhood) AND IF (gold_crowns)
THEN criminal = true
ELSE
criminal = false
Halting problem fail (Score:2)
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Whoa whoa. Why is it that some people act rationally on a personal level, but lose reasoning power if the question is about the larger society.
If stealth is going on in my dorm room, and I suspect someone, it's possible that I can catch him in the act, or after the fact. There are known techniques, like, you know, watching, or using bills with previously recorded serial number, or marking bills with UV ink. Similarly, for other types of crime, once you have a strong suspicion, it's possible to come up with
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You can't charge someone with attempted murder until after they've already attempted it...
Wouldn't it be great if you could prevent the murder in the first place, by maybe letting the potential murderer know ahead of time that he's being watched? You know, like what this system is doing.
And also let him know that other crimes will be dealt with harshly because, well, he's a multi-time offender and apparently needs more clues that he should stop than the first time offender needs? Some places have three-strikes laws. This is just letting people know they're getting close to the limit.
I don't k
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Of course it would be great to prevent a murder from happening in the first place, but that still doesn't mean you can charge them with attempted murder if they haven't actually already tried to do it. As I saId though, charging them with intent to commit murder, or conspiracy to commit murder would be entirely accurate.
And any system that allegedly predicted they would murder someone in the future would in fact be proven by said thwarting to have been inaccurate, since the murder was prevented, it did
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Of course it would be great to prevent a murder from happening in the first place, but that still doesn't mean you can charge them with attempted murder if they haven't actually already tried to do it.
The program being discussed does not charge people with crimes they have not committed. Nobody says "we're predicting you have a high likelyhood of re-offending so we're going to arrest you now."
And any system that allegedly predicted they would murder someone in the future would in fact be proven by said thwarting to have been inaccurate,
No. Stopping someone from murdering someone else before they did it does not mean they would not have committed the murder. The fact that the system DID stop them shows that it was accurate, otherwise it would not have stopped them. (You cannot "stop" someone from doing something they weren't going to do. If you
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It's not faulty logic... it's a reformulation of the classic halting problem, a well known paradox in computer science, and founded entirely on very solid reasoning.
My point is only that it either fails to predict a murder would happen because the murder is thwarted before it can, it fails to predict a murder in the first place, or else it predicts a murder that nobody will be able to stop. In the latter case, it's worthless, and the other two cases, it's wrong.
That a system might be developed that c
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It's not faulty logic... it's a reformulation of the classic halting problem, a well known paradox in computer science, and founded entirely on very solid reasoning.
The halting problem does not include the concept of "I predict it will not halt. I have, however, chosen to manually reset the computer, thus halting the program artificially, and therefore the prediction that it would not halt has been proven incorrect." That's what you are doing if you chose to detain or prevent the murder you have predicted will occur. You have not proven the prediction to be wrong, you have acted outside the system to force an outcome that the original prediction system did not conside
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You can't charge someone with attempted murder until after they've already attempted it... In case you hadn't noticed, the tense of "attempted" is past tense. The most you can charge them with intent to commit murder, or conspiracy to commit murder.
Conspiracy to murder is an extremely serious offence, in the UK at least it carries a potential life sentence, the same as murder.
laws are now political, "crimes" arbitrary (Score:2)
Police Shootings (Score:2)
How about a tool to predict which officers are most likely to commit unjustified shootings of civilians?
Then we can fire them pre-emptively BEFORE they murder innocent people!
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... yeah they should probably be encouraged into a non-armed position.
LOL "encouraged"
Because everyone loves selective enforcement (Score:2)
So... minor offenses that good white people can get away with will now be persecuted (with zeal) against minorities mostly. Nothing there that will inflame some community like Ferguson or Baltimore.
What a lot of words (Score:2)
What a lot of words to say "we're going to continue harassing the poor and minorities".
How do you know? (Score:2)
From TFA:
"The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening."
How can you know if you have succeeded? How do you know what would have happened if you hadn't done something? Unfortunately, reality does not have a control group.
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"The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening."
How can you know if you have succeeded?
In a single case, ultimately, if want to be really really pedantic about i? You don't. I mean, that kid might have had a perfectly non-lethal reason for bringing a loaded shotgun to school, but that's not going to cause the cop who arrests him before he can (potentially) begin a rampage to lose any sleep.
So no, if you want to get all deep and meaningful and armchair-philosophical about it, if you succeed you won't know, for sure. But that's a lot better than failing by not bothering to try.
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From TFA:
"The goal is to do all they can to prevent the crime from happening."
How can you know if you have succeeded? How do you know what would have happened if you hadn't done something? Unfortunately, reality does not have a control group.
You would obviously have to look at over all crime statistics. I know this will horrify the rugged individualists and libertarians here.
That was easy (Score:2)
//Algorythm
if not race="caucasian"
possible_perp=true
endif
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//Algorythm
if not race="caucasian" possible_perp=true endif
The problem with you and other people who says stuff like this is that they don't think they are racist.
you can't use math, that's racist (Score:2)
Racist in Effect not in Intent (Score:2)
Police and the low hanging fruit... (Score:2)
Is it better to assign much more police effort to white collar crime or to arrest 1,000 people trying to buy crack or carrying an illegal weapon?
The police and the DA will always go after low hanging fruit as this makes them look good when they tout statistics on how "tough on crime" they are.
Founding Fathers of Constitution Would Be Pissed! (Score:2)
We need to start sending copies of the U.S. Constitution out. It seem our lawmaker don't know a f'ing thing about it.
what do you mean 1 step closer? (Score:2)
California (or at least in LA county) already has increased penalties for criminal association (ie, gang membership). This isn't RICO-type penalties. These don't criminalize advise-and/or-coordination of criminal activities. They simply add jail time, if convicted, to acts already recognized as criminal acts. In other words, having friends who are gang members could potentially be used against a person to increase their penalty (years in jail) for non-coordinated criminal activity. This is not in Texas
precrime vs avoiding crime (Score:2)
There's a lot of milage in engaging those most likely to commit crime and leading them away from that path.
The US fixation on "revenge" rather than "justice" is rather worrying.
Re:There's an expression for that (Score:4, Insightful)
The self-fulfilling prophecy would require the person to make the prediction about them self or have someone tell them of the prediction. It doesn't work if the police make the prediction and don't tell you about it.
Re:There's an expression for that (Score:5, Insightful)
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
http://www.threefeloniesaday.c... [threefeloniesaday.com]
The previous profiling algorithm (Score:2)
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There's also step 2.5 to be taken into consideration.
Step 2.5: Upon release, try to make a living without committing any crimes, realize that basic survival via legal employment is even further out of reach for a convicted felon than it is for a normal denizen of your already precarious economic background.
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If they haven't committed any crime that we know of, they should be considered innocent and treated as such,
The fact you miss from reading just the summary is that the people involved as "targets" of the program are those who have criminal records. In other words, they have already committed crimes that we know of and have been convicted of committing them. Many of them are on probation for those crimes, and being "called-in" is a condition set by their PO.
The guy who is the focus of the article is a convicted drug dealer on probation, who is also a member of a gang. Let's see how hard it is to predict that he
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So I expected the banal comments, but how can this be used positively?
My Devils' Advocate attempt: If you can ID a person who is likely on the path to crime, would it not be good to help them change their path?
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Now where's the profit in that?
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Incarceration business? Perhaps not.
However, I don't see how this affects the cops. Someone still has to act on the information. Presumably that will be law enforcement agents. Perhaps not ones with weapons or hand-cuffs, but you wouldn't necessarily spend less money on a program like this.
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You look at the way our government runs and still say it like it would be a bad thing?
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The primary role of the police is to protect the rich from the poor. Any protections granted TO the poor are secondary and generally accidental.
I can't disagree. And that's unfortunate, because in my philosophy one of the prime roles of government is to protect the weak from the strong.
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The net effect is that all governing officials are malevolent, and only some competent.
Not everyone lives in the US.
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The primary role of the police is to protect the rich from the poor. Any protections granted TO the poor are secondary and generally accidental.
Makes me wonder how much this aligns with people who vote vs people who don't vote. If the poor are less likely to vote, then is that because they don't understand the importance or they get convinced it is not worth it? The other question, is if a person from this community stood up and got voted in, would that person remain loyal to those people, following the change in wealth status?
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The answer to that question would be complicated. It would probably be ultimately based on how sincere the elected official was, and how able they were to navigate between the interests of their people and what it takes to get anything done in the government.
The simple fact is that getting elected to any major office can have a major corrupting or at least compromising influence on you. Any human tends to view only a few dozen people as their immediate group. If they grew up in the projects, then they'd
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In part, poor people don't vote because a lot of them are disenfranchised. They were arrested on trumped-up charges and then pressured to take a plea deal by a public defender who had no time to properly defend them.
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Yes, that's what "disenfranchised" means.
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In other words, poor schoolchildren are committing a crime because they're not old enough to have graduated from high school, nor have their classmates.