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Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

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Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#31

Post by standardUser »

scarmig wrote: post #18

It seems likely that police have divested from minority communities, which I agree is a genuinely racist outcome. There are complications, though. In the 90s, leadership figures in minority communities rightly called out under policing as a serious issue that hurt their communities and needed addressing. Nowadays enforcement actions, although increasing overall quality of life and decreasing violence and premature de…

When so many common, consensual and mostly-harmless activities are criminalized, especially in communities with less resources to keep things in private homes, "perfect enforcement" becomes impossible by design. Instead, law enforcement have a vast catalog of infractions and suspicions they can use to target people at their discretion. Before we can ever hope to have equitable law enforcement, we need to reform this culture of criminalization. And vastly increasing privacy rights, the same ones being gutted by the current Supreme Court, wouldn't hurt either.

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#32

Post by joe_the_user »

mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

...if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures).

Let me outline the counter claim. Police spend more effort on actually solving crimes in rich neighborhood (as per article) but they still need arrests in poor neighborhoods so they arrest people more randomly and on flimsier pretexts. When people complain, they throw out the line you have above.

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#33

Post by zzzeek »

mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

> And yet a single Police incident gone wrong will completely overshadow the reality of this.

that's because when the police kill people, there are no repercussions for them, no matter how much obvious bias, incompetence, disregard for human life, and malice is apparent in their activity. police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted. The George Floyd murder required that it was videoed from start to finish for there to be any chance of an actual criminal trial proceeding. All of the police murders that we hear about now are all news because there is now video. Think of all the decades and decades when there was no video, how many people must have been murdered on a whim, without the event even being considered a crime. But even today, obviously immensely negligent acts, such as the murders of Tamir Rice and Eric Garner, still basically have zero repercussions for their killers.

This is nothing like the usual "murder rate", where the violence that occurs between people who are not cops is all considered to be crime, and is handled as such. There's no disagreement on what justice looks like. Murder is bad, but aribtrary murder by state actors with no accountability is worse.

> Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day.

please review the accounts of Uvalde as children and teachers were murdered over an hour while heavily armed and armored police stood around and did nothing but prevent anyone else from being able to help. There are many ordinary jobs that are statistically much more dangerous than that of the police including things like roofing, truck driving, construction (source: OSHA https://www.invictuslawpc.com/most-dangerous-jobs-osha/)

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#34

Post by KennyBlanken »

lr4444lr wrote: post #21
Barrin92 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's not really as contradictory as it sounds. I wouldn't be surprised if policing in rough areas is both irregular but also harsher when it happens, and that it potentially attracts not the best people and not the best cops.

When the police start enforcing minor infractions, they get called out for bias too, because the fines and lost work hours to misdemeanor jail time hit the people in those communities "disproportionately". Then there is the revolving door issue we are seeing when DAs are soft on minor infractions, or law makers don't want to spend the money on them in the criminal justice system, so it doesn't make sense for the cops…

They do hit disproportionately.

If you work a low-end shift job and miss a shift, you're likely to get fired almost immediately, or put on some sort of suspension, or otherwise punished via poor shift assignments and the like. At the very least, you lose income for the shift, and that is likely a substantial amount of money for you. The "court fee" is a substantial amount of money to you. You end up with a public defender who has little influence with the other officers of the court - the judge, the DA, etc. They have a docket a mile long for that day and needs to triage their time and resources, so they push you to plea out so they have time for the guy who is facing a felony or even capitol charge. If convicted your choices are jail or fines, and the fines might be days or weeks of pay you don't have.

If you work a professional job, you have "personal days" you can cash in, your employer provides you with things like free legal assistance via EAPs - or you probably already have established professional relationships with at least some sort of attorney, who you can afford, and who knows someone who knows the judges and DAs in the district you're going to be appearing in, and maybe the whole thing just goes away. The court fees are a rounding error in your weekly pay. And the laws are all "jail time or X dollar fine." So even if you're found guilty - the fine is a rounding error to you.

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#35

Post by AlexandrB »

mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

> Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day.

Now imagine being a logging worker, risking your life every day[1], and not having anyone ever say this about you.

[1] https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#36

Post by civilized »

8note wrote: post #17
civilized wrote: post #9

So, they fit a fancy model, played with it, and claim the result says something about the real world? I have never seen a valid social science result derived by this method. This is just fancy model lovers dabbling. If the patterns they claim are real, they can be exposed with much simpler and direct methods. Let's talk after that's been done.

What's the point of training a model if you don't think it will describe the real world in some way?

An AI says there is a dog in a particular picture. The truth of this finding has major implications - say a murder case hangs in the balance. Should someone go look and see if there is actually a dog in the picture?

A cutting-edge model can provide interesting leads but they need to be confirmed by a known reliable method if a serious question hangs in the balance.

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#37

Post by [deleted] »

zzzeek wrote: post #33
mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

> And yet a single Police incident gone wrong will completely overshadow the reality of this. that's because when the police kill people, there are no repercussions for them, no matter how much obvious bias, incompetence, disregard for human life, and malice is apparent in their activity. police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted. The Geor…

[deleted]

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#38

Post by daenz »

zzzeek wrote: post #33
mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

> And yet a single Police incident gone wrong will completely overshadow the reality of this. that's because when the police kill people, there are no repercussions for them, no matter how much obvious bias, incompetence, disregard for human life, and malice is apparent in their activity. police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted. The Geor…

>police can literally murder people on a whim and 99% of the time not even be suspected of any crime much less prosecuted

Same with medical professionals. Medical errors kills over 250k people each year in the US. It generally isn't criminal if they make a judgement that results in someone's death. There's been a number of serial killers in medicine because we give medical professionals the benefit of the doubt due to the nature of the profession.

My point is that these professions aren't your average jobs. It's normal for doctors and police to deal with life and death, and to make decisions that could set off a sequence of events that quickly results in death. So either we have to say that nobody deserves to make these decisions, or we have to hold them to realistic standards.

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#39

Post by Tao3300 »

scotty79 wrote: post #28
mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

Admit only minority people into the Police force. Problem solved. If a Policeman kills minority unlawfully then it's just minority on minority crime so nobody will care.

Half the officers charged over Freddie Gray's death were black. No one was less mad over it because of that.

The system can be racist even if its constituents aren't. It shouldn't be a new or unfamiliar idea to anyone here that complex systems can have unexpected outcomes, biases, and emergent properties.

Re: Event-level prediction of urban crime reveals a enforcement bias in US cities

#40

Post by Dan_Sylveste »

AlexandrB wrote: post #35
mbrodersen wrote: post #24

The Police seems to be in an impossible situation: if they don’t try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are “racist” (focusing on the rich neighbourhoods). If they do try to fight crime in a minority neighbourhood then they are also “racist” (for “targeting” specific races/cultures). It is especially difficult if they try to fight crime in a violent dangerous minority neighbourhood where every routi…

> Imagine being a police officer risking your life every single day. Now imagine being a logging worker, risking your life every day[1], and not having anyone ever say this about you. [1] https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/

I think plenty of people say that, actually. There was a very popular discovery channel (or maybe history channel) show that followed around various groups of loggers and just about every episode had someone getting injured or barely escaping injury.

Deadliest Catch, similarly, highlighted the risk faced in one of the other most dangerous jobs, offshore fishing.

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