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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

#251

Post by derefr »

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…

The "right" bureaucratic system isn't one with humans doing calculations (which we're bad at); nor is it one where computers on their own make decisions (which they're bad/inflexible at.)

Instead, it's one where computers do calculations but don't make decisions; and then humans look at those calculations and have a final say (and responsibility!) over inputting a decision into the computer in response to the calculations the computer did, plus any other qualitative raw data factors that are human-legible but machine-illegible (e.g. the "special requests" field on your pizza order.)

Governments already know how to design human-computer systems this way; that knowledge is just not evenly distributed. This is, for example, how military drone software works: the robot computes a target lock and says "I can shoot that if you tell me to"; the human operator makes the decision of whether to grant authorization to shoot; the robot, with authorization, then computes when is best to shoot, and shoots at the optimal time (unless authorization is revoked before that happens.) A human operator somewhere nevertheless bears final responsibility for each shot fired. The human is in command of the software, just as they would be in command of a platoon of infantrymen.

You know policy/mechanism separation? For bureaucratic processes, mechanism is generally fine to automate 100%. But, at the point where policy is computed, you can gain a lot by ensuring that the computed policy goes through a final predicate-function workflow-step defined as "show a human my work and my proposed decision, and then return their decision."

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

#252

Post by phone8675309 »

frompdx wrote: post #216
hodgesrm wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. You are attacking the wrong target. It's the government that's broken. This kind of outrage can happen just as easily with pencil and paper. The root cause is the lack of accountability and desire to make the government functio…

Except software allows a scale and efficiency that is impossible with pencil and paper while also creating an ideal scapegoat. Software is being used to avoid accountability at a scale much greater than what was possible with manual process.

Isn't this the basis of the book "IBM and the Holocaust"[1] where the author lays out how IBM's technology helped facilitate the wide scale of Nazi genocide?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

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

#253

Post by dghlsakjg »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #79

Well, if a judge ruled that a software bug means that you don’t get your money back if you accidentally send it out, then that same judge would probably rule that the inmates have to stay in jail due to a software bug.

Aside: The difference in the Citibank case is that the money was actually owed. Citibank was in the process of trying to get out of paying it when they sent payment.

Also, money can be given back, time can't.

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

#254

Post by dec0dedab0de »

lbriner wrote: post #57
edoceo wrote: post #3

It's like gov system don't even have test cases. They should, and they should be public. Why aren't these softwares for the public open source? See also: employment security sites, cannabis track and trace, driving license, etc. Some of these bugs cause direct financial harm to citizens and this one is much worse! Show me the test cases! Show me the code!!

I think there is still a genuine concern that open-source software allows bad people to find loopholes before the good people do. The last thing you want is someone finding a bug that allows a murderer to get released because the computer said-so. I think it can be managed but it is a genuine concern nonetheless.

I would much rather error on the side of releasing someone early, instead of holding people longer.

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

#255

Post by josephg »

RHSeeger wrote: post #142
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…

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…

I agree with other commenters. And I think another part of the problem is the consumer model of software. In a pen and paper system if there was some reason why a record was special or different from the others, you could just attach a note to it and the next person who picked up the record could read your note. Custom software systems deny that sort of ad-hoc flexibility from the people using them. There’s no way to do anything that wasn’t planned for and programmed in. So office workers who use flows managed by custom software are actively disempowered from authorship over their own workflows.

That’s one of the reasons I think Excel (and tools like Notion) are so popular - the people on the ground can learn to express themselves in the full context of the tools. I think this sort of software is far more important than we give it credit for. (It’s an invisible problem to us, because we can change the software.)

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

#256

Post by rectang »

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…

> making the world a better place

For a large segment of the US electorate, anything that inflicts pain on "bad people" is "making the world a better place".

If the software was causing prisoners to be released early, most US voters would be up in arms. But if they're being held too long, the calculus is different. In software terms, for many Americans, a "tough on crime" outcome is a "feature not a bug".

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

#257

Post by heavenlyblue »

A close issue: I have recently realised that none of the phone operators in the UK are capable of transferring phone numbers across contracts inside the same company without cancelling them first (and you are officially on the hook for the remainder in the contract). Their systems are organised around “cancelling the contract = transferring the number”. Happened to me with Vodafone.

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

#258

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

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…

> Is this because for the most part our efforts in producing software are actually doing the opposite? It certainly seems that way reading articles like this.

I think the most likely explanation is just that people didn't see the question or weren't interested in having the discussion. Most people believe the work they're doing is at worst neutral. A less likely candidate for the reason (but still more likely than your guess) is that people didn't want to be subjected to unfounded criticism of their work from people who don't know anything about it.

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

#260

Post by nybble41 »

edbob wrote: post #133
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.

> The inmates are not viewed as humans by the people responsible, enabling horrible conditions. This was not my experience as an inmate in Texas. Actually, we are referred to as "offenders" [0] because the terms "inmate" and "convict" are considered offensive. Staff can get in trouble for using a pejorative word like "inmate". (Not that they never do because quite honestly I don't know anyone that actually finds the…

> Actually, we are referred to as "offenders" because the terms "inmate" and "convict" are considered offensive.

Odd. I would think "offender" would be much more offensive than either "convict" or "inmate". The "convict" label may be in dispute in some cases, e.g. pre-trial or with a case undergoing appeal, but it's hard to argue with the fact that someone is (rightly or wrongly) an inmate of a prison. To me, of the three, "offender" sounds the most like a pejorative personal judgement rather than a neutral summation of undisputed facts.

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