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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

#161

Post by totalZero »

jacob2484 wrote: post #117
anchpop wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay each inmate $10k for each day they're unable to leave prison past one week after the end of their sentence. Most inmates probably wouldn't mind staying a couple months longer if it means they get to leave with a million dollars in the bank, and it would correct the state's incentives.

And just would pay this? You and I the taxpayers.... so no thanks to this solution.

All of these people should sue for false imprisonment.

How much would that cost you? And how much is a day of a free man's life worth to you?

This is a travesty and that sum of money is neither sufficient, nor unique to the GP's solution.

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

#162

Post by AdrianB1 »

bendbro wrote: post #115
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…

Nobody will take that contract. Any mistake in the government specifying what they want you to build can be politically manipulated into a legal matter with some probability you'll end up in prison.

Not at all: any mistake in the government specifications is the government's problem. If you have requirements and a requirement tracing matrix to deliverables and you deliver what is required, you are good.

But usually in most parts of the world these government contracts are intentionally made ambiguous for so many reasons including corruption and incompetence of the people writing requirements.

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

#163

Post by AdrianB1 »

indymike wrote: post #96
mattmcknight wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped this in a comment elsewhere in this discussion, but also makes sense here... I find the government "requirements" process tends to create situations like this. Rather than build flexible software that puts some degree of trust in the person using it, they tend to overspecify the current bureaucratic process. In many cases, the person pushing for the software is looking to use software to enforce bureaucrati…

In this case, the requirements should be as simple as implement the law.

"Implement the law" in a software product is as utopian as replacing judges with computers that "implement the law". Now does it makes sense why it is not possible?

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

#164

Post by tshaddox »

eptcyka wrote: post #146
tshaddox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't understand why that's your default presumption. Although I don't have any data about this, my impression is that generally people are aware of how long their prison sentences are and are released from prison when they are supposed to be.

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

#165

Post by [deleted] »

varenc wrote: post #122
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…

If there’s penal consequences for bad software, you can bet that the development cost will easily 10x overnight.

[deleted]

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

#166

Post by panic »

frompdx wrote: post #75
mattmcknight wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped this in a comment elsewhere in this discussion, but also makes sense here... I find the government "requirements" process tends to create situations like this. Rather than build flexible software that puts some degree of trust in the person using it, they tend to overspecify the current bureaucratic process. In many cases, the person pushing for the software is looking to use software to enforce bureaucrati…

the person pushing for the software is looking to use software to enforce bureaucratic control that they have been unable to otherwise exercise This is frequently my observation as well. In the process of creating stricter control the bureaucrat increases the the power of their bureaucracy while shifting the blame for any problems to a faceless entity. They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls to insu…

> Severe consequences are attached to low stakes situations and rational individuals who see the harm caused by the situation are rendered powerless to make changes.

You can see the process at work within this very thread -- "And within that chain, there should be legal recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validation, should the software fail to perform its task correctly." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26228195)

People seem unable to imagine any way to improve things except by adding more and more legal consequences. We need to stop doing this!

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

#167

Post by spaetzleesser »

frompdx wrote: post #119
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…

My cynical take is that the lack of accountability is exactly what makes software enabled bureaucracy so appealing. If this true, there is no incentive to change.

This is part of it. Otherwise it’s just way cheaper to run a faceless bureaucracy that sometimes throws people under the bus when a mistake has been made.

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

#168

Post by [deleted] »

ashtonkem wrote: post #70
hkh28 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outside observer (European) this seems to be the way the American prison system is run. The inmates are not viewed as humans by the people responsible, enabling horrible conditions. Fixing such an issue should be top priority, and in the meantime, you would revert to pen and paper accounting to ensure the correct release of each prisoner.

You’re overlooking something else. America has an unbelievable number of prisoners, which makes more careful and humane management effectively impossible. Estimates are that we’ve got about 2% of the US population in prison or somewhere else in the correctional system (pre-trial detention, probation, parole, etc.), the labor required to treat these people like humans isn’t available. And arguably by the point where y…

[deleted]

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

#169

Post by majormajor »

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…

The lack of desire to get things right throughout the bureaucracy is the problem. The software is just a mechanism. Other organizations that actually care figure out ways to get things right even when the software has issues.

You can see in the film Brazil, from 35 years ago, that this was already a problem and concern even without modern software.

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

#170

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

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…

A big problem is that while we might improve the typical use with software, the failure mode is generally ignored and swept under the rug. See google's customer service. You can speed up and improve the average case a thousand times more, driving costs down by maybe a thousand times, or you can bring costs down like 2x but keep the benefits of manual, person centric failure recovery. Even then, non-automation doesn't make it "human" in the sense we all want. A rep in a call center who is only allowed to follow the playbook almost might as well be an automaton for all the freedom they have. Are faceless economies of scale and the bureaucracies they bring the root issue?
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