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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

#291

Post by ethbr0 »

munk-a wrote: post #243
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…

> 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…

The problem is that we never evolved COBOL / VB.

Or we did, but then used the resulting easier-to-learn / easier-to-write languages exclusively for web dev, and further specialized them.

There's a mind-bogglingly huge chasm of simple business data processing software that has no performance requirements & no need to be written in an impenetrable language.

Any one of the employees there could probably tell you what should be done in each case, and it's an indictment of our profession that we haven't created a good language / system that lets them do so.

You can optimize along increase-developer-productivity or along increase-potential-developer-population. We chose the former.

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

#292

Post by rowanG077 »

Aerroon wrote: post #245
rowanG077 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'd say a lot of software is comparable in complexity to the large bridges that exist. Of course there are massive software projects that dwarf any bridge ever build. But a lot of software is only moderately complex.

I don't know about infrastructure in the US. I don't live there. I'm happy with the infrastructure in west Europe though. I wish that much care was put in to the software I use every day.

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

#293

Post by carlmr »

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…

Maybe every contract like this should be programmed to the same API twice. Then you could at least compare it the two pieces of software agree. You check the disagrees and get the companies to fix them (should be part of the contract).

And don't tell me you can't buy two CRUD applications for 24 million dollars. It's a silly amount of money for such a buggy application.

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

#294

Post by brundolf »

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 way I see it, one aspect of this is software literacy. The bureaucrats would only be doing the task by hand instead of fixing the bug (or even cobbling together a more basic automation! Excel could probably get them most of the way there) if they are a) unable to do it themselves, and b) can't/don't want to pay an expert to do it.

We can no longer afford to partition the people who understand/use business logic from the people who turn it into code and maintain that code. Period. It's ridiculous and endemic at this point. This problem permeates virtually every large organization in existence; public or private.

It's partly an issue of education, partly an issue of organizational structuring, and partly an issue of accessibility of technologies. But the sum of these parts has become entirely unacceptable in the year 2021.

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

#295

Post by macintux »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #179
crummybowley wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But even if it was a bug... I don't understand why software would prevent somebody opening the gate and letting the inmate out...

I have done some reading about people who got convicted wrongfully. Being released from US prison is an extremely bureaucratic and slow process where nobody seems to be willing to apply some judgement. As long as the process was followed everything is fine even if it’s blindingly obvious that the person is innocent. Getting into prison is easy but getting out is really hard and will take you years even if everybody a…

Never forget Troy Davis. Injustice abounds.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/03/innocence-is-not...

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

#296

Post by caconym_ »

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 reality is that manual entry is even more error-prone, bias-prone, with more people falling through the cracks.

It doesn’t have to be. But when it’s subjected to the same incentives that produced this software and perpetuated its broken state, we should expect the result to be much the same.

When you pull back and try to look at it with fresh eyes, our prison system is abjectly terrifying. It’s designed to funnel wealth to private entities, not to implement justice or rehabilitate criminals or whatever other worthy goal(s) you might imagine for it. This story (as horrifying as it is just by itself) is only one little corner of the monolithic perversity of the system as a whole, and the executive powers involved in steering that system are about as close to evil as you can find in the real world.

The whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt. As long as it exists, it puts the lie to our claim of being a society that values freedom and justice.

Circling back, I guess the point is that the ideas about how to do software in your last paragraph have no chance of being implemented in the system as it currently exists. To fix “systemic problems”, we will have to aim a lot higher with a much bigger gun.

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

#297

Post by brundolf »

tantalor wrote: post #6

This isn't a "bug". The problem is the software was not designed to do this and needs to be updated to support a change in requirements Bugs are when software does something it isn't supposed to, or doesn't do something it is supposed to. In this case, it's doing exactly what it was intended to do when it was implemented and put into service. Since then things have changed, so the vendor needs to implement the featur…

I posted under another comment, but this to me is a software-literacy problem. You shouldn't have to hire an engineer to fix or adjust business rules in 2021. Period. The people who know the domain should be able to maintain (and really, create) any automation of that domain themselves.

This is partly a failure of education, partly a failure of organizational structuring, and partly a failure of software accessibility. But it's a gargantuan failure all the same.

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

#300

Post by edbob »

ashtonkem wrote: post #234
edbob wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The exemption allows an individual to be sentenced to slavery , but that can only happen if the federal or state laws also allow that sentence. Is there any jurisdiction whose laws allow a sentence of slavery? Has anyone actually been sentenced to slavery in the last 100 years or so? I would imagine that if some jurisdiction somehow did sentence someone to slavery, the states would quickly amend the constitution to m…

It's wise in these situations to consider the concept of plausible deniability, and how it can be used to obscure intent. To my knowledge, nobody has been sentenced to slavery in a long, long time. On the other hand, the US has managed to lock up 2% of its population and force them to labor in circumstances and rates that would be illegal for free citizens in order to guarantee the profit of private corporations. Tha…

For the record, I fully support decriminalizing drugs, even if I disagree with the currently fashionable rhetoric about their supposed harmlessness. The statistical debate you want to have is fine. It could potentially be helpful, but not if you insist on terms that tell people that they are helpless. Please just stick to accurate terms that don't convince people to not even try.

We have an existing term, "prison labor", which accurately describes the conditions and evokes the appropriate moral connotations. When we have completely adequate terms already, why insist on a legally inaccurate word which requires such a lengthy redefinition?

Slavery is an involuntary condition which cannot be exited through one's actions. It's vital to recognize that criminals can choose to exit the criminal class. It's not vital for rich people in the suburbs who don't have to live in our world. It's vital for us, ourselves. Those of us who accept responsibility for their actions tend to be the ones who make it in society. The ones who blame society, government, Republicans, white men, SJWs, or anything else outside of themselves which they have no control over, keep doing the same things over and over, stay addicted to drugs, sex, and violence, and keep coming to prison over and over. (There are some skinheads that blame racial preferences for their own failures in life, lest anyone think that I'm naming SJWs facetiously). Rich people can afford to have these intellectual debates that talk about helping the poor but never seem to actually do anything. We have to actually live in this world, where our own choices and actions will be the only ones we can always count on.

Stop telling people that they have no control over their lives. If they believe you, it will be true. These ivory tower theories have real-world consequences. They never seem to get around to actually helping the poor, but they do convince people that they can't help themselves, and those are the people that I see coming back to prison on their 8th or 9th sentence. Those are the guys with 8 kids, most of whom will also end up dead or in prison.

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