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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

#241

Post by Clubber »

whack wrote: post #228
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 following is very illuminating: > Instead of fixing the bug, department sources said employees are attempting to identify qualifying inmates manually... But sources say the department isn’t even scratching the surface of the entire number of eligible inmates. “The only prisoners that are getting into programming are the squeaky wheels,” a source said, “the ones who already know they qualify or people who have fam…

I don't think it's so much that software is better or worse than manual entry. First, it's the attitude / rules that assume what's in the system is right. Second, it's no real procedure to audit or check the accuracy of the data.

From a professional who works with data systems, you're more likely to have a database with bad data in it that not.

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

#242

Post by deefour »

caturopath wrote: post #77
londons_explore wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1 person-year is pretty much the smallest labor unit when quoting for modifications to government contracts. If the government wants to change the logo on the login screen, they're gonna pay 1 person-year. Why would I quote less? It'll take over 1 person-year for another contractor to pick up and start supporting the codebase, and we won't support a codebase that another contractor has touched. It's just the nature o…

We did tons of tiny contracts when I was working in government contracting (DOD/DOE).

Okay?

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

#243

Post by munk-a »

whack wrote: post #228
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 following is very illuminating: > Instead of fixing the bug, department sources said employees are attempting to identify qualifying inmates manually... But sources say the department isn’t even scratching the surface of the entire number of eligible inmates. “The only prisoners that are getting into programming are the squeaky wheels,” a source said, “the ones who already know they qualify or people who have fam…

> Comments like yours seem to glorify a pre-software world filled with manual entry. The reality is that manual entry is even more error-prone, bias-prone, with more people falling through the cracks.

I think that the pre-software world was quite bias-prone and extremely expensive for large processing jobs like this. The question is how this system was allowed to transition from the expensive manually managed system that used to be in place to the automatic software driven system that is replacing it at such a cut-rate that gigantic bugs were allowed to sneak in.

It appears this software is primarily used by the state government so why was such a poor replacement allowed as a substitute for the working manual process.

Also, the number of bugs this software has accumulated since Nov 2019 (14000) is astounding enough that I assume it's counting incidents - that's a fair way to go since these are folks' lives, but I'd be curious to know just how bug laden this software actually is.

Although there is another factor here - this specific release program was a rather late feature addition that may not have been covered in the original contract with ACIS since the bill was only signed into law two months before the software was rolled out.

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

#244

Post by dmead »

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…

most of us have jobs that service the revenue streams of rich owners. what did you think was going to happen?

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

#245

Post by Aerroon »

rowanG077 wrote: post #184
RHSeeger wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

No one is arguing that software must be perfect. But we aren't really even trying. Most software is written in extremely error prone languages without adequate testing. You don't hear anyone saying we should throw out finite-element analyses and other computational verification methods when designing bridges because bridges can never be perfectly secure. Yet that is exactly the sentiment I often hear on software.

Are bridges and software comparable in complexity though? How many engineers work on designing a bridge compared to software developers that are writing a program? There are more than an order of magnitude more software developers in the US than civil engineers.

Now think about the state of US infrastructure. Does it inspire confidence for the future?

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

#246

Post by platinumrad »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #114

What are the ethical obligations of software developers working on this project?

They almost certainly have zero decision making power so whistleblowing and then quitting is the obvious course of action.

>“It was Thanksgiving weekend,” one source recalled. “We were killing ourselves working on it, but every person associated with the software rollout begged (Deputy Director) Profiri not to go live.”

>But multiple sources involved in the rollout said they were instructed by department leadership to “not say a word” about their concerns. “We were told ‘We’re too deep into it — too much money had been spent — we can’t go back now.’”

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

#247

Post by nybble41 »

vertex-four wrote: post #160
jacob2484 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You the taxpayers are the people who would prefer these people stay in prison than release them. You took on the responsibility when you put in place a system to imprison them. You could always campaign for prison abolition if you don’t want the responsibility...

> You the taxpayers are the people who would prefer these people stay in prison than release them.

That's a rather broad blanket statement bordering on collective punishment (which BTW is classified as a war crime by the UN). The status of taxpayer makes you a victim of the state, not necessarily someone with influence over its behavior and certainly not an ardent supporter of all its policies. The vast majority of the taxpayers had nothing to do with the situation and might well be opposed to keeping these people in prison if the facts were explained to them.

Perhaps the matter should be put to a general vote—those actually in favor of keeping the inmates in prison can split the cost of any wrongful-imprisonment suit in the event the state loses.

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

#248

Post by jakelazaroff »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #239
whack wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The following is very illuminating: > Instead of fixing the bug, department sources said employees are attempting to identify qualifying inmates manually... But sources say the department isn’t even scratching the surface of the entire number of eligible inmates. “The only prisoners that are getting into programming are the squeaky wheels,” a source said, “the ones who already know they qualify or people who have fam…

One of the issues is that laws are made on paper and then everyone needs to figure out how to map it to software. Instead, laws should be codified in software and legal APIs should be binding. This would do wonders for efficiency, but also force laws to be cleaned up, be consistent, simple and logical.

I don't even know what this would entail. Reality is continuous and subjective; computers are not. And there's no reason that "legal APIs" would be any more cleaned up, consistent, simple or logical than our current legal system.

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

#249

Post by TexasfoldsEm »

Wow. I know firsthand from family how this can severely destroy someone's mental health in what may not be so obvious; it is extremely heavy on someone every moment past the first hour they go past their release time, then the first day followed by a variety of things that will then be taken advantage of by other inmate and guards while one's defenses are down. The fun poked at by other jealous inmates and cruel guards constantly will also weigh down hard on another human being. Arizona penal system puts you into almost always into very nasty and dangerous places of incarceration. frompdx made a statement that truly made my gut feel as if I was at the top of a roller coaster I did not want to get on in the first place.

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

#250

Post by olingern »

This is one of those "bugs" that is a feature for the prisons. Of course no one wants this fixed.

Also, proof that things that are newer aren't better.

> “We have a couple modules they spent millions of dollars on that we can’t use at all,” a department source said.

> The ACIS software system replaced an older program called AIMS that had been in operation for more than three decades.

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