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Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

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Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#141

Post by cwkoss »

edbob wrote: post #94
atty wrote: post #10

The fact that they appear to have identified individuals who should be released, but have not, due to the software not being updated, is frankly disgusting. I believe holding a person against their will is a criminal act - seems like most of the employees of the Arizona correctional facilities are now guilty of crimes worse than the majority of their inmates.

This is just how bureaucracy typically operates. Everyone knows that the system is messed up, but no one can override the system without potentially huge personal consequences. As a former prison inmate, I honestly think that most of the people affected will be quite happy with the monetary compensation that they'll receive once the courts get done with this. > seems like most of the employees of the Arizona correcti…

> But quite a few inmates have claimed to me to be guilty of crimes much worse than what they were convicted of.

This is irrelevant and a dangerous ends-justification. No person's imprisonment should be justified by crimes they were not convicted of. We should not seek a justice system that punishes unprovable crimes.

What percentage of rapes by prison guards (or police or CEOs or politicians) gets reported to police? What percentage of those reports results in a conviction? Probably far less than "rape in the hood".

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#142

Post by RHSeeger »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #106
frompdx wrote: post #20

This is an outrage. It is also a perfect example of how software is used to create increasingly more elaborate and faceless bureaucracies that force individuals to spend more and more time contending with them. Somehow software has become the ultimate vehicle for bureaucratic violence. Software is simultaneously infallible and the perfect scapegoat. The inmate who lost their phone privileges for 30 days is an example…

We know exactly how to fix it. Our cowardly politicians and toothless regulatory agencies are not up for the challenge. For every piece of software that can directly and materially harm someone's life like this, there should be a chain of responsibility. And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validatio…

It will never be the case that software will be perfect. We can get closer and closer, but the closer we are the more expensive the next step in closing the gap is.

While I do agree that making software better/more reliable is a good goal, I believe we would be better off making the system as a whole more robust; the system that includes humans. For every situation where a piece of software has control of something that effects society (individual, group, etc), there should always be a clear and direct means of appealing / pushing back on the decision that was made. Those means should involve a human reviewing the information and making a decision based on that information, not on what the computer said. There's thread after thread of us saying the exact same thing about companies like Google and Facebook; it should apply as a general rule.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#143

Post by throwaway0a5e »

Draiken wrote: post #137
kingaillas wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the cost of that chain will also rise. If I'm (or my company is) personally on the hook for bugs, then I'm going to adopt a NASA-like software quality regimen, pushing up the cost of the product. Every single part of the software stack below me, from hardware, OS, compiler toolchain, disavows responsibility so if I have to absorb all the risk, the product is going to be mind bogglingly expensive.

I have to say that sounds exactly how this kind of software should be built. We're not talking about the newest social media hype. This software actually matters. Specially since today most of these bureaucratic processes can't be done without these softwares.

>I have to say that sounds exactly how this kind of software should be built.

You see this in every topic.

Every "muh pride in muh trade" person says something like this about the relevant trade but the fact of the matter is that the world runs on off-brand duct tape, harbor freight tools, walmart jeans, economy tires, and all sorts of other "value" solutions and the race to the bottom is what has given us much of the modern world that we take for granted.

A balance needs to be struck. And it generally needs to be struck further toward the "quickly and cheaply build it like crap but make it easy to override or reset" portion of the available solution space than anyone pontificating about quality on the internet will readily admit.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#144

Post by adjkant »

Smaller point as most have covered the insanity of this, but am I reading this right that they are paying 125K for adding a field to some piece of data? I know government contracts can be bloated and there can be complications that don't make it straightforward, but give they itemized 3 separate fields and charged 185 developer hours each for them, that's just either insane gouging or blatant corruption right? That's nearly 400K for three fields being added.

https://media.kjzz.org/s3fs-public/styles/special_story_imag...

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#145

Post by ryandrake »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
blobbers wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are prison workers and you're asking them to run a social network (with certain constraints). They wouldn't even know the first thing about how to hire someone capable of doing this. They'd have to hire a consultant to hire another consultant.

Corrections management is who I would consider the directly responsible party, not corrections ICs (to be clear, no scapegoats). The buck stops somewhere when we’re talking about infringing on someone’s right to freedom. Excuses are unacceptable.

The buck seems to stop at the computer/AI nowadays, in an alarmingly growing number institutions and companies. And you can't punish a computer or hold an AI accountable. This seems to be an end state desired by people who were previously accountable.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#146

Post by eptcyka »

tshaddox wrote: post #81
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.5 million prisoners in the USA. You want to go through that list, without software?

No, I want the presumably thousands of people who work at prisons to each go through their list of prisoners and determine when prisoners should be released, using the assistance of software but not completely deferring to software.

People working at prisons have no incentive to be kind or instill any kind of humanity in their actions, thus I would expect having them go through their list of prisoners and determine when prisoners should be released to have just as cynical a result as relying on broken software.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#147

Post by Enginerrrd »

lbriner wrote: post #55
frompdx wrote: post #20

This is an outrage. It is also a perfect example of how software is used to create increasingly more elaborate and faceless bureaucracies that force individuals to spend more and more time contending with them. Somehow software has become the ultimate vehicle for bureaucratic violence. Software is simultaneously infallible and the perfect scapegoat. The inmate who lost their phone privileges for 30 days is an example…

Software that infringes on the public (even if they are criminals) as opposed to software that people can opt to use or not, needs to have a very serious question asked at design time: If the software produces an incorrect result, what mechanism exists to override it/audit it/provide damages etc. The fact people are not asking that is worrying. I understand why the system was not designed to do something that happene…

As someone with a civil engineering background:

This right here is the difference between conventional engineering disciplines where designs require a Stamp from an Engineer of Record who takes on personal responsibility in the event of design failures vs. the current discipline of software engineering.

There's a big difference between a software developer and a software engineer, and I think that difference should be codified with a licensure and a stamp like it is in every other engineering field in the states.

Software like this ought to require a stamp.

A decent analogy is the environmental work I've done. When we come up with solutions and mitigations to environmental problems, like software, we can't always predict the result because of the complexities involved. So we stamp a design, but we, or the agencies responsible for allowing the project often specify additional monitoring or other stipulations with very specific performance guidelines. It's a flexible system and possible to adapt to, but there are real consequences and fines when targets aren't met. When bad things happen, the specifics of what went wrong and why are very relevant and the engineer may be to blame, or the owner/site manager, or the contractor who did the work, or sometimes no one is to be blamed but the agencies are able to say: "Hey this isn't working and needs to be addressed, do it by this date or else."

In engineering, there's an enormous amount of public trust given to engineered designs. The engineer takes personal responsibility for that public trust that a building or bridge isn't going to fall down. And if you're negligent, it's a BFD.

Given the current level of public trust that we are putting into software systems, it's crazy to me that we haven't adopted a similar system.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#148

Post by amelius »

frompdx wrote: post #20

This is an outrage. It is also a perfect example of how software is used to create increasingly more elaborate and faceless bureaucracies that force individuals to spend more and more time contending with them. Somehow software has become the ultimate vehicle for bureaucratic violence. Software is simultaneously infallible and the perfect scapegoat. The inmate who lost their phone privileges for 30 days is an example…

There is plenty of useful software. For example: scientific software.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#149

Post by foerbert »

rjurney wrote: post #140
dimitrios1 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know exactly how to fix it. Our cowardly politicians and toothless regulatory agencies are not up for the challenge. For every piece of software that can directly and materially harm someone's life like this, there should be a chain of responsibility. And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validatio…

There is a chain. There is legal recourse. And there are considerations in government IT that you would not believe and they are incredibly difficult to deal with on minimal resources. It has to be harder than the private sector and this application isn't any different than buggy mainframe software run by major banks. It sits and gets crufty.

This is a new system that replaced a previous one not that long ago. This isn't some crazy old thing running COBAL on a VAX somewhere that nobody understands anymore.

Re: Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates

#150

Post by grumple »

I will say that the sum of my misdeeds throughout my life doesn't compare to depriving a single person of a single day of their freedom. It's something I think about when I think of politicians who passed unjust laws, or prosecutors who pursued marijuana convictions, or judges that condemned the innocent.

But now I've learned that that could, in fact, be a potential problem in the future...

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