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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

#121

Post by throwawaysea »

This seems like a knee jerk reaction to the current political climate. "Predictive policing" has a scary sounding name but it is really just "efficient resource allocation". If there is a crime hotspot, shouldn't there be more police on hand to enforce the law there? Why have them idly patrol other areas? If someone has a history of crime and is being released, shouldn't they be monitored to ensure the public's safety, especially if there is a risk of recidivism?

The line of thinking I find dangerous in the article is that differences in outcomes are seen as racist. That doesn't make sense to me. If more people of race X commit crimes, and more members of that race are therefore subjected to legal consequences, then that is not necessarily a racist situation. If race isn't an input factor into these algorithms, the algorithms are not racist.

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

#122

Post by jirdperson »

iguy wrote: post #43
danielhlockard wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that non-white neighborhoods are policed heavier, and as a consequence they "catch more criminals" in those neighborhoods.

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…

This is somewhat tangential to your point, but I think catching more “criminals” (I.e. people who break laws, which is virtually everyone at some point - though many won’t even realize it and are unlikely to face consequences) can certainly lead to an increase in crime. In the US, at least, contact with the criminal justice system can significantly reduce social and economic opportunities and increase the likelihood that an individual will engage in future criminal activity.

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

#123

Post by kortilla »

sambull wrote: post #50
eanzenberg wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a challenging problem, but the way things are currently going, do you want a 70’s NYC in 2020+?

We only use lead in aviation fuels now.. so probably not.

In case anyone misses this reference, there is a claim that the cause of all of the violence was exposure to lead on a society wide scale.

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...

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

#124

Post by zo1 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #33
wonderwonder wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is standardized for everyone, its enforcement that is the issue. There are clear differences in enforcement for different races and different wealth levels. My example occurred many moons ago before pot was decriminalized any where. I am old :)

Yes agreed, enforcement has to be standardized as well. Justice should be blind, except to the law. The pendulum swinging though has me worried, where dangerous crimes are currently unenforced.

The knee-jerk reaction against policing will cause more harm than good, all in the name of some nebulous "long term" outcome that is borderline undefinable.

Some knee-jerk reactions that we're seeing or considering"

1. Banning facial recognition.

2. Banning predictive policing (this article).

3. Defunding police departments

4. California's ACA5 amendment that seeks to remove anti-discrimination laws, allowing racial and gender discrimination.

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

#125

Post by tomohawk »

basch wrote: post #111
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…

Not sure what the answer is for pedophiles. Hopefully it is not this:

https://www.dw.com/en/berlin-authorities-placed-children-wit...

The point being, some sort of predictive model is always used to evaluate sentencing and release. Is 5 years enough, or will that pedophile attack more kids when they get out? How about 10 years? Gee, they don't seem to be attacking children in prison, maybe we should release them early for good behavior?

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

#126

Post by seaish »

Havoc wrote: post #85

>to send officers to target chronic offenders, or identifying places where crime may occur. Those are two very different things in my mind. Targeting individuals is very Minority Report and definitely not cool. Focusing on problematic areas seems like good policing common sense though? A bit like the local nightclub near me has a police car chilling in front of it every Friday night because there are always drunks sl…

They usually use past crime to determine the problematic areas, and this past crime is a source of bias. If there's any sort of racism in the system, problematic areas will turn into areas of specific race. Races and especially income levels aren't spread evenly across Santa Cruz or any city.

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

#127

Post by an_opabinia »

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…

Big budget movies sort of struggle against telling stories about justice for people whom we discriminate against contemporaneously.

You could never make a movie that even loosely portrays the plight of Uighers, who suffer under a notoriously technology-heavy form of surveillance and oppression (what we are calling predictive policing). Not because of censorship but because no one is going to fund your film.

So while I love Philip K Dick and Syd Mead and whatever, it was still a movie that gave more screen time to an Audi than to a black person. Your fiction needs to engage with the real somewhere, and people are realizing that the fiction of predictive crime is really about the reality of arresting black people for crimes that white people do not get arrested for more efficiently.

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

#128

Post by jeffbee »

erichocean wrote: post #90
jeffbee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally every city in America, regardless of their approach to policing, has experienced a massive drop in crime rates from 1990 forward. This tends to undermine arguments that broken windows or stop-and-frisk are effective policies. https://crime-data-explorer.fr.cloud.gov/

> Literally every city in America, regardless of their approach to policing, has experienced a massive drop in crime rates from 1990 forward. I've never heard of anyone arguing that policing did not increase nationwide in the 90s. All of the data we have suggests otherwise, and pushing back on that is basically the entire point of the recent BLM protests. One simple way we know crime was more aggressively enforced in…

I'm not sure that your conclusion of universality can be supported by the evidence. For example Middlesex County, Massachusetts has had roughly flat incarceration rate for decades.

https://github.com/vera-institute/incarceration_trends

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

#129

Post by zo1 »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #118
cryptoz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sort of nuance is almost never brought to the fore, unfortunately. Right now, public policy and media-attention seems to be entirely driven by empathy and outrage.

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

#130

Post by ReptileMan »

Havoc wrote: post #85

>to send officers to target chronic offenders, or identifying places where crime may occur. Those are two very different things in my mind. Targeting individuals is very Minority Report and definitely not cool. Focusing on problematic areas seems like good policing common sense though? A bit like the local nightclub near me has a police car chilling in front of it every Friday night because there are always drunks sl…

It is complicated at best.

I think that in most jurisdictions seriously planing a crime is a crime in itself.

>A bit like the local nightclub near me has a police car chilling in front of it every Friday night because there are always drunks slugging it out.

And what happens when said policemen block the entrance of the club and start patting down everyone leaving for pico or weed?

A police presence can calm down an area, but also can be used to harass the population there.

Rules of engagement matter.

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