331–340 of 434 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The comment that spawned this thread is here and suggests phone privileges can also be taken away by mistake in this system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227031
I know very little about the prison system, but surely the suspension of phone privileged cannot prevent an inmate from contacting his legal representation, right?
Could something like this be fixed by leveraging the existing incentives? Something like if an inmate challenges the output of the system then they will automatically be released in, say, 90 days unless the output of the system can be validated manually, perhaps by a third party? Suddenly there is an incentive to create a verifiable and correct system on the part of the prison-industrial complex itself.
There doesn't seem to be any incentive against challenging, so what's to prevent some black box bureaucratic software pipeline to take in any challenge and automatically label them as "verified"? Any "third party" that doesn't belong to the prison-industrial complex becomes part of it if they get involved with this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If a prisoner knows he's past his release date, can't he contact his lawyer?
Depends on if the computer has taken away phone privileges. I suppose a good lawyer would already know the release date and take action without being contacted? But I have no idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Corrections management is who I would consider the directly responsible party, not corrections ICs (to be clear, no scapegoats). The buck stops somewhere when we’re talking about infringing on someone’s right to freedom. Excuses are unacceptable.
The buck seems to stop at the computer/AI nowadays, in an alarmingly growing number institutions and companies. And you can't punish a computer or hold an AI accountable. This seems to be an end state desired by people who were previously accountable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not the software makers who are committing the crimes. It’s the people abdicating responsibility to software. You can’t wipe your hands of releasing a prisoner on schedule by delegation that to software. The software can help you with your task, but if it’s brought to your attention that there’s a mistake, your failure to promptly fix it is on you.
It's both. Look at the amount of unnecessary waste created by the abysmal Android update policy.
I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it would be very unusual circumstances, especially since there’s usually an operator of the software sitting between the developer and the person harmed by the software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are prison workers and you're asking them to run a social network (with certain constraints). They wouldn't even know the first thing about how to hire someone capable of doing this. They'd have to hire a consultant to hire another consultant.
How did they manage to do it 20+ years ago?
I think the general understanding of paper filing systems vs. computer systems is less specialized!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 calcula…
> and responsibility! You won't get this though. If the machines are the only ones capable of making the calculations with less error then a human can only validate higher level criteria. Things like "responsibility" and "accountability" become very vague words in these scenarios, so be specific. A human should be able to trace calculations software makes through auditing. The software will need to be good at indicat…
Usually, in any case where a bureaucracy could generate a Kafkaesque nightmare scenario, just forcing a human being to actually decide whether to implement the computer's decision or not (rather than having their job be "do whatever the computer tells you"), will remove the Kafkaesque-ness. (This is, in fact, the whole reason we have courts: to put a human—a judge—in the critical path for applying criminal law to people.)
Isn't this clearly defined false imprisonment under Arizona law? Here's the relevant statute: 13-1303. Unlawful imprisonment; classification; definition A. A person commits unlawful imprisonment by knowingly restraining another person. B. In any prosecution for unlawful imprisonment, it is a defense that: 1. The restraint was accomplished by a peace officer or detention officer acting in good faith in the lawful perf…
> Assumption being that a detention officer is not acting in good faith if they have a list of people who should no longer be detained under state law.
I agree with your premise and assertion, but I'm not sure that's exactly what's happening here. I'd like to preface this by saying I absolutely believe there need to be ramifications; I'm just not sure that it fits "clearly defined false imprisonment." I think a category would have to be added to the false imprisonment statute for "negligence" for this to be considered false imprisonment and let me tell you why:
From what I can tell, this article is talking about a couple of massive issues but the wrongful imprisonment bit is about a specific bug (SB1310) in ACIS that can't calculate an updated release date for inmates that complete special programs that award additional release credits as per an amendment signed into law in 2019. Since they can't automatically update a release date for individuals that have completed this program, they keep track of it manually. To me, the article doesn't read like they have a list of people who should be released but aren't being released because the software says so; from my very limited perspective it reads like there are certain programs an inmate can complete to earn extra release credits and since the system can't track these extra credits, the detention officers do it manually. I would imagine their manual process goes something like this:
1) Compile list of inmates that have earned extra release credits through the aforementioned release programming.
2) Select inmate from list, possibly in order of original release date, earliest first.
3) Calculate the amount of release credits they received from completion of the programming.
4) Calculate the total hours those credits equal.
5) Deduct hours from release date.
6) Manually update the release date in ACIS (likely requiring warden and/or judicial approval, but idk).
6a) Since ACIS now has the appropriate release date, the inmate will be processed for release now (if the date has passed) or as they normally would be.
6b) Remove inmate's name from list unless currently enrolled in early release programming, in which case they are moved to the bottom of the queue.
7) Lather, rinse, repeat.
Being denied release because of a software error would be hellish for both an inmate and their loved ones... But because it doesn't seem like they have an actual list of people that should have already been released but haven't been because the software made a critical oversight, I don't think it fits the legislation as it exists today for false imprisonment. The tool is broken so they've switched to manual calculation until someone more important decides it's worth fixing.
If we add negligence to the false imprisonment statute, I'd agree wholeheartedly! But IA[very_much]NAL, so I'll confess I don't really know anything about anything.
EDIT: formatting
> “When they legislate these things, they need to be appropriating enough money to make sure they work,” a source said. They estimated fixing the SB1310 bug would take roughly 2,000 additional programming hours. 40 hours a week times 52 weeks is 2080 hours. Subtract a few weeks for vacations and holidays, and you get a little less that 2000 hours. So, basically, this is a little more than one programmer-year of effor…
> It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an apparent implicit economic calculation Spending money will remain economic decision until we can have government agencies fueled by the righteous indignation of their critics rather than having a line item added to their budget. Until you can convert that indignation into legal tender, agencies will remain subject to old fashioned accounting constraints.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the government writes up a spec for how the legalese should map to code that engineers then implement? How is that different from what happens now?
Only the programmed end result in code would be legally binding. Lawmakers would have a big interst in making sure the code is correct and provide incentives/change procedures accordingly. The inmates in this article would be released immediately after the code-law is implemented; you could apply new tax laws (i.e. as a config file) to your accounting software. Why maintain an obfuscated legal text when you need it i…