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Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

reuters.com

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Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#111

Post by basch »

godelski wrote: post #99

Looking at all these comments, did no one watch Minority Report ? The whole film was about the difficulties and ethics of "precrime" and arresting people before they even committed a crime. Obviously we aren't doing that here, but stories often exaggerate a bit. I'd also like to add another good series that explores this topic even more than Minority Report : Psycho-Pass . Psycho-Pass is more extreme in that there's…

I like to bring Then Now up everytime precrime comes up. Until it goes off the rails in the end, its one of my favorite articles of all time. The paragraphs I yanked below, dont do its craziness justice. https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/78691781-c9b7...

"But the oddest is STATIC-99. It's a way of predicting whether sex offenders are likely to commit crimes again after they have been released. In America this is being used to decide whether to keep them in jail even after they have served their full sentence.

STATIC-99 works by scoring individuals on criteria such as age, number of sex-crimes and sex of the victim. These are then fed into a database that shows recidivism rates of groups of sex-offenders in the past with similar characteristics. The judge is then told how likely it is - in percentage terms - that the offender will do it again.

The problem is that it is not true. What the judge is really being told is the likely percentage of people in the group who will re-offend. There is no way the system can predict what an individual will do. A recent very critical report of such systems said that the margin of error for individuals could be as great as between 5% and 95%

In other words completely useless. Yet people are being kept in prison on the basis that such a system predicts they might do something bad in the future."

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#112

Post by godelski »

tmoravec wrote: post #96
godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we are [0]. Here's the breakdown of why people are in jail (numbers rounded) - Drug offenses: 46% - Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 20% - Sex Offenses: 11% - Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 6% - Immigration: 5% - Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 5% - Robbery: 3% - Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 3% So drugs vs (WEA + BLPO + R + HAAKO) is 46% vs 39%. Last I checked 46 > 39, so yeah we are tal…

Is that global statistics or statistics for "over policed" neighbourhoods the article and discussion is about?

> Is that global statistics or statistics for "over policed" neighbourhoods the article and discussion is about?

Neither, it is US statistics.

Getting specifically the "over policed neighborhoods" statistics is a little trickier but when you do some location of arrest lookups you do see a higher percentage of arrests coming from those neighborhoods, so it would make for a reasonable assumption that those neighborhoods are a representative demographic of this dataset (if you're drawing from two jars and you draw 80% from one jar and 20% from the second jar, the marbles you have is a better representation of the contents of the first jar than they are of the second jar).

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#113

Post by erichocean »

basch wrote: post #98
eanzenberg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there evidence for this though? The great crime decline in cities like NYC were due to increased policing and the “broken window” policy, along with stop & frisk.

Minneapolis. Seoul. “In the 1970s and early ’80s, we built 70 percent of our subsidized units in the wealthiest white districts,” Myron Orfield said. “The metro’s affordable-housing plan was one of the best in the country.” "Only three large metros where at least half the homes are within reach for young middle-class families also finish in the top 10 in the Harvard-Berkeley mobility study: Salt Lake City, Pittsburgh…

Are you suggesting Minneapolis is a…success story? I honestly can't tell, but if so, BLM would like a word…

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#114

Post by catalogia »

kortilla wrote: post #106
godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we are [0]. Here's the breakdown of why people are in jail (numbers rounded) - Drug offenses: 46% - Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 20% - Sex Offenses: 11% - Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 6% - Immigration: 5% - Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 5% - Robbery: 3% - Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 3% So drugs vs (WEA + BLPO + R + HAAKO) is 46% vs 39%. Last I checked 46 > 39, so yeah we are tal…

> so yeah we are talking about things like pot. Only if you want to talk about the non-violent half to paint a picture that it’s pointless. For the sake of discussion, assume pot is legal and those drug arrests didn’t happen. Low income areas still have higher rates of violent crime. Is your argument that drug criminalization is causing other violent crimes?

Drug criminalization causes some but certainly not all violent crime.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#115

Post by cestith »

kortilla wrote: post #106
godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we are [0]. Here's the breakdown of why people are in jail (numbers rounded) - Drug offenses: 46% - Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 20% - Sex Offenses: 11% - Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 6% - Immigration: 5% - Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 5% - Robbery: 3% - Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 3% So drugs vs (WEA + BLPO + R + HAAKO) is 46% vs 39%. Last I checked 46 > 39, so yeah we are tal…

> so yeah we are talking about things like pot. Only if you want to talk about the non-violent half to paint a picture that it’s pointless. For the sake of discussion, assume pot is legal and those drug arrests didn’t happen. Low income areas still have higher rates of violent crime. Is your argument that drug criminalization is causing other violent crimes?

Creating an unregulated black market for which there is high demand always increases violent crime.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#116

Post by kortilla »

wonderwonder wrote: post #105
jimbob45 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more upset that the parent was implying that his neighborhood would have equal arrest numbers if the police had been more present on account of his pot smoking. I hope everyone can see what a stupid argument that is and that’s the hill I’m willing to die on here.

Given a long enough timeline of increased arrests, police presence and assumption of guilt, why would my neighborhood not eventually have the same number of arrests and crime. Unless your argument is that there is something physically different in the other neighborhood that drives them towards crime. If that's your argument and I am having a hard time seeing what else it could be then I think we are done here.

Of course poor neighborhoods are going to have higher crime. Unless you have been truly poor you won’t understand the sense of desperation that can lead to bad decisions.

You grow up in a food scarce household with a parent addicted to painkillers with no guidance on what a path to a successful future is and crime becomes a lot more palatable. Getting in the game starts to look like the only possible way to “make it”.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#117

Post by wonderwonder »

MikeAmelung wrote: post #109
godelski wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we are [0]. Here's the breakdown of why people are in jail (numbers rounded) - Drug offenses: 46% - Weapons, Explosives, Arson: 20% - Sex Offenses: 11% - Extortion, Fraud, Bribery: 6% - Immigration: 5% - Burglary, Larceny, Property Offenses: 5% - Robbery: 3% - Homicide, Aggravated Assault, and Kidnapping Offenses: 3% So drugs vs (WEA + BLPO + R + HAAKO) is 46% vs 39%. Last I checked 46 > 39, so yeah we are tal…

Don't even know why I'm going to bother, but most of those drug offenses are trafficking crack/cocaine and meth, a large percentage of them also involve weapons. It's not people who were smoking weed on the porch. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/dofp12.pdf

4 in 10 arrests are marijuana related of those "As has long been the case, around nine-in-ten U.S. marijuana arrests are for possessing the drug, rather than selling or manufacturing it."

How many of those that graduated to crack/meth etc. started out with simple marijuana arrests?

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/01/22/four-in-ten...

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#118

Post by throwaway894345 »

cryptoz wrote: post #39
eanzenberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, law and order has to be standardized for everybody, regardless of background. Pot was decriminalized in many states already. Are there other things you would like to decriminalize? There are avenues for those, but it’s not a fast turn-around, those things take time.

In our society, everyone is a lawbreaker. There are so many laws that surely everyone is guilty of breaking some law. This results in police being able to discriminate by selectively enforcing laws. Since everyone is probably doing something illegal, police do racist things by profiling people who are 'probably doing [something illegal]' without sounding racist. It's a common pattern in societies where the laws are s…

It's important to be correct about the particular nature of the injustice: the police aren't profiling people who are probably doing something illegal. To the extent that police do profile (I don't think it's a question that they do, only to what extent), their profiling is based on who they perceive to be the most likely of committing the worst offenses, not simply "who is likely to be doing anything illegal at all".

That said, even if black Americans are more likely to commit these worst of offenses (as reported by victims), it's still unjust because any given black individual may not be guilty and doesn't deserve increased scrutiny based on the color of their skin--justice ought to be colorblind and individualistic.

That said, not everything that appears to be profiling is actually profiling. Police are deployed more densely to areas with high violent crime, and these areas tend to skew black. That means they're more likely to witness more minor offenses as well. The racial disparity here isn't due to profiling, its due to the high incidence of violent crime in certain predominately-minority communities. This is an important distinction because it determines the best course of action to solve the disparity problem--if the problem is mostly attributable to police profiling, then fixing profiling is the most urgent problem. If it's due to high incidence of violence in communities, then the best solutions will be various anti-violence programs and keeping violent offenders off of the streets (and ideally rehabilitating them).

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#119

Post by cataphract »

cryptoz wrote: post #39
eanzenberg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, law and order has to be standardized for everybody, regardless of background. Pot was decriminalized in many states already. Are there other things you would like to decriminalize? There are avenues for those, but it’s not a fast turn-around, those things take time.

In our society, everyone is a lawbreaker. There are so many laws that surely everyone is guilty of breaking some law. This results in police being able to discriminate by selectively enforcing laws. Since everyone is probably doing something illegal, police do racist things by profiling people who are 'probably doing [something illegal]' without sounding racist. It's a common pattern in societies where the laws are s…

So if at a given time it's impossible to investigate all burglaries where the amount stolen is less than $200, should we make them all legal?

Discretion in deciding which crimes to investigate is always necessary. Discretion on charging and guilty pleas seem much more problematic to me.

Re: Santa Cruz, California bans predictive policing in U.S. first

#120

Post by ReptileMan »

baddox wrote: post #62
iguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More policing may indeed catch more minor crimes that would otherwise go unobserved. But the morgue has a pretty close to 100% set of data on murder victims. It's hard to argue that those are caused by catching more criminals. (And in fact, murders in high-crime neighborhoods are less likely to be solved. If anything, murders are caused by this failure to catch first-time murderers, before their second go. Their vict…

But how does the level of policing in an area affect murder rates? I don't know the answer, but from statistics I've seen, it seems pretty clear that police are not exactly great at solving murders.

It is hard to solve a crime when your main witness is only accessible trough Ouija board
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