Predicting Future Crime Is it Ethical?
The Philadelphia Police Department is experimenting with an advanced computing system that statisticians and criminologists believe can predict future violent crime with some accuracy. Using a learning computer, the city is working to predict which of the city's 49,000 parolees are most likely to commit violent crimes in the future.The predictors that mattered most were age, age at first contact with adult courts, prior crimes involving guns, being male, and past violent crimes. Officials considered including race in the equation - an extremely scary thought - but decided against it. There may be other questionable factors included in the computer's calculations.While this system raises some serious red flags, it also has potential to improve the efficiency of our parole system if it is used with restraint. But there are major concerns about the new system: it could lead us to spend too much energy on "high-risk" parolees and ignore the needs of "low-risk" people, denying them opportunities for support and services. And would an increased reliance on this system mean more minor technical violations for parolees considered high-risk?
"The main ethical concern," said Richard Bonnie, a law professor at the University of Virginia, "is the possible unfairness to the 'selected' offenders."
If the high-risk people do get more supervision, it means they face a greater risk of being caught in a technical violation that will send them back to prison. Should such power be relegated to a computer?
The experimental results from Philly:
To "train" the system, (University of California statistician Richard) Berk fed in data on 30,000 past cases; about 1 percent had committed homicide or attempted homicide within two years of beginning probation or parole.
The data included the number and types of past crimes, sex, race, income, and other factors.
To test its power, he fed in a different set of data on 30,000 other parolees. This time he didn't tell the computer who would go on to kill.
Applying what it had previously learned, the system identified a group of several hundred who were considered especially dangerous. Of those, 45 in 100 did commit a homicide or attempted homicide within two years - much higher than the 1 in 100 among the general population of probationers and parolees. http://criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/predicting_future_crime
I think it is not ethical. These predications guarantee nothing for sure- these are only assumptions. I saw a movie maybe 10 years ago and it showed the police of the future. There were police officers who had a system that could read criminal thoughts of individuals and predicted their future criminal intention. Later one scene of the movie shows how the police arrested some individual because of a crime he would commit in the future if he will stay free. Imagine this happens? Would you like to be arrested because of some criminal thoughts?
ReplyDeleteThe movie the poster above me mentioned is Minority Report and it doesn't work in the same way that the predictions in the blog do.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed emotions on predicting crime. On one hand as mentioned in the above post, people on parole are a lot more likely to commit another crime but not all of them did. Only 45 out of 100 were repeat offenders. Which means 55 out of 100 ex-criminals would have extra people observing them and wasting away financial and human resources that could be used else where. At the same time its better to have the extra support in high risk areas, because the cops in the low risk areas seem like they never have anything to do.