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Software Used To Predict Who Might Kill
eldavojohn writes "Richard Berk, a University of Pennsylvania criminologist, has worked with authorities to develop a software tool that predicts who will commit homicide. I could not find any papers published on this topic by Berk, nor any site stating what specific Bayesian /
decision tree algorithm /
neural net is being implemented." From the article: "The tool works by plugging 30 to 40 variables into a computerized checklist, which in turn produces a score associated with future lethality. 'You can imagine the indicators that might incline someone toward violence: youth; having committed a serious crime at an early age; being a man rather than a woman, and so on. Each, by itself, probably isn't going to make a person pull the trigger. But put them all together and you've got a perfect storm of forces for violence,' Berk said. Asked which, if any, indicators stood out as reliable predicators of homicide, Berk pointed to one in particular: youthful exposure to violence." The software is to enter clinical trials next spring in the Philadelphia probation department. Its intent is to serve as a kind of triage: to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous.
Hey I've seen that movie! Tom Cruise survives and gets to have the cute girl!
I could not find any papers published on this topic by Berk, nor any site stating what specific Bayesian / decision tree algorithm / neural net is being implemented.
Yeah, I think if you ask for it to answer that question, the algorithm responds "I'm sorry dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Push Button, Receive Bacon
They also found that people with enlarged frontal lobes were also more likely to be a murderer
Here are the pertinent details:
Title: Forecasting Dangerous Inmate Misconduct: An Application of Ensemble Statistical Procedures
Journal: Journal of Quantitative Criminology
Issue: Volume 22, Number 2 / June, 2006
Pages: 131-145
Abstract:
In this paper, we attempt to forecast which prison inmates are likely to engage in very serious misconduct while incarcerated. Such misconduct would usually be a major felony if committed outside of prison: drug trafficking, assault, rape, attempted murder and other crimes. The binary response variable is problematic because it is highly unbalanced. Using data from nearly 10,000 inmates held in facilities operated by the California Department of Corrections, we show that several popular classification procedures do no better than the marginal distribution unless the data are weighted in a fashion that compensates for the lack of balance. Then, random forests performs reasonably well, and better than CART or logistic regression. Although less than 3% of the inmates studied over 24 months were reported for very serious misconduct, we are able to correctly forecast such behavior about half the time.
Unfortunately, you've got to pay $30 to get this paper. Maybe some slashdotter with a school/corp subscription to Springer will put up the text? ;-)
Their probation officer pays more attention to them, and they feel trapped in the system. They can't move on and contribute positively, and lash out violently.
Thanks, that helps.
Their probation officer pays more attention to them, and they feel trapped in the system. They can't move on and contribute positively, and lash out violently.
Alternately, their probation officer ignores them, and they get dumped out on the street, where they're unable to find a job and contribute positively, and turn to crime instead.
It's a real win/win.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"Richard Berk, a University of Pennsylvania criminologist, has worked with authorities to develop a software tool that predicts who will commit homicide.
This is utter BS, and a plain simple statistics based profiler.
I'm so pissed off after reading about this "supposed", that I wanna kill someone.
And don't forget, all arabs are terrorists! Don't forget to give them obvious, dirty looks full of awareness of their terroristic descent, when you happen to see one.
Yeah this is definately some scary stuff. I don't think that they should use this stuff at all. If it starts getting used more and more they will think that they can predict who will do what eventually and start arresting people for crimes they have yet to commit. Just like in the movie. Scary Stuff...
...like Minority Report
Yeah except in Minority Report, they were using psychics to predict who would kill; here it's just an overgrown spam filter.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This sounds like a really BAD idea to me. Either it works really well and then people will start asking why it isn't being used on the general population or it wont work and we'll be focusing our attention on the wrong people. What's the indicator of success? A reduction in homicide rates among people singled out? Our justice system is based on dealing with people AFTER they break the law, everyone, even people at "high risk" to commit crime have to actually do something wrong before you can take action. It may just be used to focus rehabilitation and surveillance efforts on high risk people, but the profiling potential for this must be obvious to the people who designed it, then all it takes is for a little public exposure of how this system could have saved some children if it had been used more aggressively. I'm a bit uneasy about any technology or system that seeks to punish people retroactively. The way the article describes it as working seems harmless now, but the potential of abuse is there. Definitely something to keep an eye on.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Excerpt from the test:
...
...
21. Ever killed or tortured small animals?
22. If yes, did you often think they enjoyed it and wanted more?
23. Are you a minority?
24. Do you read Slashdot?
25. Regularly?
26. Would you punch a guy with glasses in the face?
27. Would you punch a clown in the balls?
Sure. Once they start plugging in the stats from Halo 2, that will make it obvious as to who is willing to kill or suck the big one.
Why spend money to find-out what we already know? It's gun owners that commit nearly 100% of the murders in this country. If we put all of them in prison then we will all be safer. Unfortunately because many of those violent thugs have money and influence through the NRA we will never see a common sense approach to murder prevention. I will never understand why anyone other than a complete idiot would ever own one of those things given that it is 43 times more likely that you will kill yourself or a loved one with a firearm than kill in self-defense.
Hopefully with the much better congress we have now we'll finally get real laws to protect us like we had with the assault weapon ban that was passed by the last good congress that has saved thousands of lives. Many of us are still here only because of the good work the last good congress did.
This study was done on incarcerated criminals. Even attempting to apply the findings to people outside prisons would be a HUGE mistake. Now if they conducted a similar set of questions on a few thousand randomly selected members of the public and were able to show the same high correlations, that would be a different story entirely.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
I'd like to beta test this on myself ;).
Also, how long will it be before myspace users have this survey on their webpages or is it already there?
Pardon sir but will those nine false positives consider it something they "choose to live with"? The program is hardly worth mentioning, considering there are a thousand and one theories why people do horrible things and this software reflects only one and based on one set of inacurate statistical data only.
You can imagine the indicators that might incline someone toward violence: youth; having committed a serious crime at an early age; being a man rather than a woman, and so on. Each, by itself, probably isn't going to make a person pull the trigger. But put them all together and you've got a perfect storm of forces for violence
Is Berk implying that a checklist of questions can make someone pull the trigger?
Well in this case I suppose we have no choice but TO KILL THOSE PEOPLE IN ADVANCE I think! Oops. Well what do you expect, I have "youth" and I am a "man, rather than a woman".
Anyone remember the movie Minority Report? Things didn't end up too well after that was over. I think this is probably a bad idea.
I wanna know what my score is. Think of what sort of a wonderful internet test this can be for MySpacers and other teeny bloggers. "Your homicidal tendency rating is: 76% Postal Worker. While not guaranteed to go berserk and kill a bunch of people, when you do, boy, is it one heck of a story."
"Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden? Or do they write 'em down for you?"
"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, I'M NOT HELPING?"
"I mean you're not helping! Why is that, Leon?"
So SpamAssassin works this way. Any one criteria (such as from a dynamic IP address) generally isn't enough to consider email spam. You need to have a number of factors contribute both positively and negatively to the final score, after which it's considered spam. But this is for humans. Maybe the software is called PeopleAssassin?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It's a sweet too tempting not to touch, isn't it... integrate all state records such as police, medicare and school record to allow automatic detection of social care bodies' "insertion points" to better spend resources, and reach out to those who truly need it.
;)
Somehow I fail to see this _not_ happening, quite simply because the smell of efficiency in resource-strained social security systems all around will feel very tempting. As a regular guy, I honestly have no clue if I'm for or againgst this. Help me, Slashdot
"70% confident this man will commit murder" = 30% are definately not murderers who will be discriminated against as being a high risk murderer.
"95% confident this man will commit murder" = 5% are definately not murderers who will be discriminated against as being an EXTREMELY high risk murderer.
Stop invalid scientific research. Ask your local scientists to feed their lab rats with a phytoestrogen-free chow.
...these people.
I thought Phillip K. Dick already explained why this was a bad idea...
There, I edited that for you buddy.
Let's just leave it at that's what you really intended, because otherwise I'll destroy all of my karma in spewing forth a slur of obscenities about how...
well, let's just leave it at that.
Wow, murder is considered funny?
With the short time I spent in the US I saw just how horrible of a place it is. There are way too many gun owners. Something needs to be done about that. I know I will never return until the US finally puts into place some common sense gun control.
...the attempt to solve with technology what can't be solved by technology.
How about having social workers that deserve that job title? Do we soon replace all judgment on humans and human interaction with computers'?
It is this very dehumanization that causes violence among humans in the first place. How long until someone is flagged by this and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because he feels trapped?
This whole anti-social project shouldn't even have started. What a waste.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
has worked with authorities to develop a software tool that predicts who will commit homicide.
Don't forget the best practices for committing a homicide:
1. Commit often and early, to prevent victim escape.
2. Copycat homicide is cheap, so don't be afraid to branch existing homicides, if you feel you need to.
3. While committing a homicide, always write down a full log of what happened, and put it with it with body (or bodies). This won't just help the cops get oriented, but also to yourself when you come back to the crime scene, say, an year later.
actually there are many tools like this already in existence... modern probation work has been scientificalised and statisticalised to the extent that you can't do anything with an offender until you know what their various scores are. In the UK the risk of general reconviction is calculated statistically in the OGRS programme based on age, conviction, prison sentences etc. (http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/probation1.html) . This also produces a level of risk that that person will commit a violent offence. There are other specialist tools for domestic violence - the Spousal Assault Risk Assessment which is a 20 item checklist. Also, for sex offenders their risk of reconviction is assessed by using the Thornton Risk Matrix 2000. Every offender who comes into the probation system also has an OASys assessment completed on them - which asks the assessor to score factors from 14 different areas such as accommodation, lifestyle, substance misuse etc. (http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/files/pdf/ Info%20for%20sentencers%203.pdf).
Hej! Nasi tu byli!
there was a high incidence of people in jail with a first name ending with y.
Thing is, among certain working class demographics, it was popular to name boys things like "Conny", "Ronny", "Johnny", "Tony", "Tommy" and so on. Presumably mostly a generation fashion wave of sorts.
And men stemming from that population were more inclined to do violence, since (as popular prejudice indicates) such families were not uncommonly abusive, alcoholic and peers to criminals.
Eerie.
This is of course not saying that all people named "Conny" are criminal. Only that statistically, guys named Conny are more likely to be in jail than guys named Torbjörn.
"This will help stratify our caseload and target our resources to the most dangerous people," probation department director of research Ellen Kurtz said
Emphasis added.
This is being used by people who have already been tried, convicted, and sentenced and are being monitored and required to check in anyways. The model, further, was derived from the probation system (not from those already in jail):
"Using probation department cases entered into the system between 2002 and 2004, Berk and his colleagues performed a two-year follow-up study - enough time, they theorized, for a person to reoffend if he was going to."
This is just being used to help parole officers decide how to allocate their caseload. That's a Good Thing(TM). No one seems to be talking about applying it to society in a minority report fashion, and while such a harebrained scheme may eventually be table, it needs to be evaluated independently of whether it is a good idea for parole officers deciding how to allocate limited resources.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
It's also true that people who own automobiles cause nearly 100% of vehicular manslaughters in this country. Nevertheless, the vast majority of automobile owners do not cause death or injury with their cars.
The point is that getting rid of cars or guns isn't going to solve the problem of people acting irrationally or irresponsibly. Banning is a useless solution because it only treats the symptom and not the problem, and will not cause a decrease in violent activities. People need to be educated so they can find better solutions to resolve their personal problems, or in other cases properly medicated and/or given therapy to resolve their psychological problems.
OT: // pass on our disease to someone else
I'd do more of a:
while(!drunk) {
try{
drink();
sex();
} catch ( TooDrunkException e ) { throw new lunch(); }
catch ( SexuallyTransmittedDisease d ) { throw e; }
}
+5, Truth
and tried a couple of similar package before. They're all snakeoil.
Nothing can replace years of professional practice and the ability to analyze the bumps on a perps skull.
It looks like Scotland Yard is also looking for scary new tactics in fighting crime. The latest idea of Laura Richards, head of analysis of the Metropolitan Police's Homicide Prevention Unit, sounds like a strangely familiar concept to those who have seen Minority Report. She aims to create a database of people who could supposedly commit a crime in the future, based on their psychological profile.
Even though preventing crimes is a noble motivation, this idea raises serious privacy issues.
As a sidemark it should be mentioned that Laura Richard also seems to be part of the team that "revealed" Jack the Ripper's face some time ago.
All this will do, is distract the case worker from seeing whats right infront of them. software is not the answer to everything.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They should use the predictive capability of markets instead. Set up a little in-prison pool of money on who might kill; whoever trades highest, is most likely to kill at a given moment. It'll work great !
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
So, Richard, how'd you score?
many places in europe (with virtually no legal gun ownership) are in fact much safer than the usa
c ausation
... so that's the most significant difference between "many places" in Europe and the U.S.? You don't think there are, just perhaps, some more significant social, economic, and cultural contributors to the difference in crime?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_implies_
I find it amusing that Europeans love to bemoan Americans for thinking, particularly when they travel, that Europe should be just like America; however, whenever a European or Euro-phile analyzes crime in the U.S., the only difference that ever gets brought up between the two places in question is the difference in gun control. Really
Europe and the U.S. are not the same place, and you'd have to control for a whole lot more variables than "gun control" in order to start comparing something as high-level as per-capita murder rates.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Typically, when you see this kind of "Behold, this will totally solve {problem X}" type project, its really just an academic trying to get national attention, so that he'll be noticed by someone running for an election at some point, and will thus get a "Vote for me, because I endorse {impossible solution that sounds good in a press byte X}" grant. Very few psychologists of any reputability put too much stock in these magical little Q and A's nowadays...
Mod Points: Helping you keep your opinion to yourself.
This is the most insightful comment in this discussion so far.
... was yours? The lack of a sarcasm tag gets me every time.
It was also a joke.
Wait
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Wouldn't that be AssassinAssassin?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Normally, I take the stance that kids are perfectly capable of distinguishing games from reality. That is, distinguishing between on one side killing a kraut in a Fokker Dreidekker or an alien on Halo, and on the other side beating up the neighbour's kid at school.
... but there may be something to this. Maybe not today, but where will we be in 5, 10, 20 years? "Your honour, I do admit to walloping that fella, but honestly, I thought I was jacked in. Y'see, I forgot that I had just jacked out to go the the loo..."
But just now I started to wonder if that will always be the case. I know the old pacman joke[1], but that was back in the glorious days of 4- or 16-color sprites. Now; with ever more realistic video and audio, and with the insidious blurring and merging of RL and cyberspaces (MySpace, WoW, SL, et al), the contrast may not be all that clear anymore.
This hasn't really struck me before, and I'd like to think I'm just being overly paranoid
[1] Computer games don't affect kids. If Pacman would have affected us as children, we would now run around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetetive music. (Heh.)
"Good news, everyone!"
"concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous"
So we already know which are most likely to be dangerous, and we're going to use some simplified-down-to-40-attributes computer software to.... reassure us of what we already suspected? Hmmm..
If this pattern matching software actually worked, people would use it for some purpose that makes wads of cash.... like the stock market.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
...I'm pretty sure that growling huge man with bloodshot eyes and a huge dagger, running towards me and less than 10 metres away could be having only one thing in mind....
"Software Used To Predict Who Might Kill"... hmmm
:D
You know, the issue with this definition is technically anyone *MIGHT* kill.
Now, make me a software that predicts who *WILL* kill, whom and when, and we're in business
From TFA: Asked which, if any, indicators stood out as reliable predicators of homicide, Berk pointed to one in particular: youthful exposure to violence
Seen the news from Iraq lately?
Looks like we're creating a whole generation of homicidal maniacs over there...
Quidquid Latine dictum sit, altum videtur (anything said in Latin sounds important)
... a piece of software that can predict from a 5-minute test game of Quake who's most likely to frag ?
I was expecting to find an online, multiple-choice questionnaire ..... "Are you a murderer?" sort of thing. What a disappointment!
Unfortunately I have a big programming task ahead of me for today; otherwise I'd do it myself with a few lines of Perl and a MySQL database.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
the grandparent quotes that the system predicts half of the violent prone individuals.
what's the false positive rate ?
you can get half with a coin toss if you don't mind the false positives.
-- Avishalom is usually vish
so what does this mean? how about we conduct surveillance on anyone this program comes up with. you know, tap their phones, read their email, impound their hdds, etc. maybe make them wear homing devices so we know where they are @ all times. we could even shape them like little six pointed stars. i mean, they're dangerous, right?
or how about we use similar programs to prevent people who might drive unsafely from getting drivers licenses? or sterilize potential rapists? i think you see where im going w/ this.
the bottom line is that this program could be very useful in conjunction w/ traditional police practices if used responsibly and w/ restraint . But how often do police agencies operate under these conditions? If you're really curious, just ask Rodney King.
"Its the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine." -R.E.M.
About the same as the "Classification" of people by "psychologists" in Nazi Germany back in 1933-45.
Sad, but true. An obvious case of history repeating itself.
And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill."
"I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL!" And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL! KILL!" And the sergeant came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall and said, "You're our boy."
--
BMO
On the other hand, if you're an offender, there's a 50% chance you'll be labeled. Thats a 50% chance you won't.
Better than chance, I suppose, but a useful predictive tool it is not.
If kids couldn't tell the difference between pretend and real, we would have never gotten to Pac-Man. Have you ever looked at what kids used to play? They wouldn't look at any graphics on the screen. They would chase down real people tie them to a tree, and physically pretend to cut their scalp off. It is a game that you might have heard of, "Cowboys and Indians". They would pretend to kill each other in cold blood with guns. They would physically act out violent crimes when they would play "Cops and Robbers". If exposure to pretend violence were have any real effect on kids, we wouldn't have made it this far.
3) Do you ever fantasize about murder?
I don't get it. This would include most married people...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Software such as this is not really new. IIRC, the LAPD has been using a software called MOSAIC, made by an expert in violent behaviour, Mr. Gavin De Baker (and associates).
http://www.mosaicsystem.com/
The software is deployed in, for instance, a setting where a women has been battered by her husband. By feeding some data on the perpretator and the victim, the police department might recomend a women that she not return home, due to a huge statistical chance of her being murdered, according to data compounded from previous cases like hers.
This is pretty interesting stuff. I don't really think there anything new here, though, in terms of statistics or software. The new thing is that criminologist are learning how to make smarter tools. Which is Good Thing.
PS: I am not affiliated with GdB & assoc.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
So they will adminster this early in childhood so they can weed out potential bad kids?
"sorry, but johnny has been expelled from school beacuse he might, someday, perhaps do bad things somewhere, to someoene"
So, without schooling and unable to find work, he falls in to the world of crime, proving the assumption that he was a bad kid afterall.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
(in the uk) reoffending rates are more than 50%
, 00.html..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1953079
perhaps the best way to predict who'll commit crime is to look at what we let out of our prisons early. Why do we only seem to think that paedophiles are the only ones who'll reoffend?
--AlexC
Just because I dont agree with climate change doesnt make me a troll
There are scientific reasons behind human behavior. Elevated testosterone will tend to elevate violent behavior. Raised in an abusive home raises the likelihood of being an abuser. Raised in a racist home raises the likelihood of violence against other races. Raised with a religion of violence, one is more likely to be violent.
Given enough sample data and enough time, one could construct a system where the likelihood of violent behavior can be predicted. Will the predictions be 100% accurate? Of course not. You certainly couldn't use it to pre-convict someone. However, throwing out the science because you don't like the implications on human nature is as intelligent, as well, intelligent design.
Sounds to me like he's just using his own (made up) linear combination of the answers you give. That is, if you answer yes to question 1 he applies his own weighting to it and sums that with the other questions.
... do you live in America? Number of homicides in the US in 2004: 16137 ~= 537 per 100,000 population (http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/tables/circ umsttab.htm)
Number of homicides in the in England and Wales 2004/05: 825 = 1.5 per 100,000 population
(http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/page40.a sp)
As an engineer friend of my likes to say, "I theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they're different."
In theory, the Bayesian approach should work well because it deals with ambiguous or contradictory information well.
In practice, I have grave doubts that the information being fed to the network has the degree of independence the model assumes. In effect, confirmation will already have been applied to data colleciton.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It may not be a movie, but there is a short story by Asimov called All the Troubles of the World about something similar.
Asked which, if any, indicators stood out as reliable predicators of homicide, Berk pointed to one in particular: youthful exposure to violence."
For the love of god do NOT let Jack Thompson get a hold of this...
I will forever be a student.
This is really sad and on slashdot, no less (though I am coming to expect it these days). This is research. This is an idea. It's in the early phases and it is doing what many research ideas do for starters, working in a controlled environment. I see all of the criticisms about why it won't work and why it could be used for bad things but this is how we learn. Our first airplanes sucked too but they were the foundations upon which we built what we have today.
Some of you criticize the way it will be used but I see precious little about how it can be used. You fear that it will be misused and not without reason, I suppose but look at the potential positives. What if this kind of research ultimately proves that exposure to violence at an early age? What if we show that video games don't cause violence in children or that red food coloring really does have a harmful effect on behavior (loss of control being harmful)?
The knowledge is worthwhile, this is a start, where we build our knowledge base. Even if it fails in the long run we learn from the research and our failures. Sure, it can be misused. So can a gun, a knife, a pen or mod points (I it found particularly amusing seeing people who disagreed with the popular "free-speech mentality getting modded down, a form of censorship, just because their views were unpopular).
When did the quest for knowledge become subject to political correctness on Slashdot?
This reminds me of an episode of numb3rs (spoiler?) in which software which statistically analyzes the "potential" of an young individual is found (episode name: Sacrifice) way more than Minority Report.
sw5YRhw4ln3pr7$Ock1/4ma0u8Lw2Tm5l6/7DOiC5e6t4NSb6
put them all together and you've got a perfect storm
Anyone that uses the phrase "perfect storm" should not be allowed to make decisions that will effect other peoples lives.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Both the number of false negatives, and the numbers of false positives, in minority report were far smaller than in our current system. So putting it up as a dystopia only shows ignorance of how flawed our current system of justice is.
"..although some of the existing classification systems have demonstrable effectiveness...they typically fail to identify with usual forecasting skill the very few inmates who are likely to commit the most serious offenses..."
1) WTF is "the usual forecasting skill"
2) if they are "demonstrably effective", why do you need another method?
From TFA, they said out of their sample population only 3% were later reported for very serious misconduct, and that their method was able to correctly forecast this behaviour about 50% of the time. How is that different from chance?
Sorry, the summary should have been "new software test predicting violent behaviour fails to score better than chance in prison sample population".
Finally, one might suspect that the noise level in a prison population test would make this a substantially SUBoptimal population to test "proclivity to violence" software....I mean, they ARE ALREADY IN PRISON. If the test was simply binary, pretty much everyone there SHOULD show a tendency toward violence, no?
Seems overall like a poorly designed and reported test with unclear results. How is that news?
-Styopa
Can we expect this same software to be used by military recruiters?
After all, someone who won't kill will make very bad soldiers so anyone not flagged should be banned from service.
Look for the people wearing t-shirts that say "guns don't kill people, I DO."
"Would you punch a clown in the balls?" Why do I find this so funny? I cant stop laughing.
Telecommuting! What about socialization?
Its intent is to serve as a kind of triage: to let probation caseworkers concentrate most of their effort on the former offenders most likely to be most dangerous.
Five years later: "Lack of supervision from probation caseworker" becomes a checkbox for those the system cleared the first time around.
Predictive Technology ( see "Astrology", see "Operation Iraqi Freedom" ) is inherently flawed because it trivializes the existence of the human will. Predictions, even with the best statistical info and probablity heuristics, are successful only in mapping the "paths of least resistence". If we always succumb to our habits, our tendencies, our "comfortable behaviors"... then yes, it is very easy to predict what we will do. The fact of the matter however is that the world is filled with exceptions to profiling of any type, and one could almost argue that profiling, predicting, etc... leads to a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. I contend that we always have the "choice to chose", even at the last moment before we act, and that certain choices invalidate any predictive system. This is why I think it is important to pay attention to all the choices we make (even the tiny ones -- like whether to use EQUAL [Aspartame, aka nutrasweet] or Stevia in one's coffee), and practice exerting our "will". Use it or lose it. As a zen master might say (or not) "The past and future do not exist.".
I think ANYONE would kill under the right circumstances. Look at war for instance... All soldiers have to kill at one point or another during a war. Whether it's hand to hand combat, pointing a gun and firing or dropping a bomb. It's all killing. You also have crimes of passion where someone loses control and goes over the line. A parent who witnesses something horrific happening to a child will likely lash out in a rage which would certainly cause death under the right cirumstances. The same for a spouse. You can't predict who will or won't kill if you don't know the situation the person is in.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
30 to 40 variables? He's considering a problem as complex as predicting the future, and he's maxing out at 40 variables? This guy is a quack!
I'd also like to know how they use this data. I mean, if it actually works and is used effectively, you're going to prevent murders, right? But if they prevent the murders, they have no proof that the "tagged" person was ever going to commit a murder, so how do they justify the extra attention given to that person? Plus anyone on probation who does commit a murder will presumably be the one who wasn't tagged, and therefor not watched as closely. So even if it works flawlessly, it will look like it failed unless they purposely let some murders occur to give them the statistics they need to prove the system works. Eesh.
Growing up in the South, I've seen plenty of poor white men turn to crime as well. Perhaps we should just lock up all poor males.
However, this will still miss all the white-collar crime committed by people like Ken Lay. Perhaps we should just lock up all males, or better yet genetically engineer people so no new males are ever born, and females can reproduce without males.
You have to admit, there'd never be another war on this planet if this happened, and crime would be rare.
So: what if you know that you have all the contra indicators: black male youth, poor background, divorced parents, ...
Why bother to do anything: you can't get credit (you are going to be a criminal - right ?), you can't get to be an apprentice or into a good college (you are going to be a criminal - right ?), ...
I can see this happening. Be scared, real scared!
Larger mutual funds track too many stocks to make intraday trades on each one individually. They use expert systems for simple, "maintenance" trading and leave complex stuff like the fund's overall composition to humans.
So, people do make money - not in the "zomg, my magic computer program predicts that stock will go up tomorrow so buy a billion shares" kind of way, but in the "selling on high volume is bad" kind of way.
DATABASE WOW WOW
...before he was elected. More than 750,000 people might still be alive.
tcboo
No, that is just not the case. The average kill rate in Europe is rather high. You must count the fact that oppressive governments and war take more lives than civilians any day. And Europe is certainly a place that rates high there. With many wars over history, the latest notable being WWII, Europe accounts for millions of dead due to totalitariansm, which *never* tolerates citizens being able to defend themselves. It is because they cannot defend themselves that thes oppressive regimes can and do take hold there.
It is in fact the taking of arms from citizens that paved the way to the Killing of 20 million or so of Jews, Christians, and others who were defenseless. Meanwhile, just a few Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto held off the German Army for quite awhile.
Adolf Hitler's use of firearms registration lists to confiscate guns and the execution of their owners teaches a forceful lesson
Further, a question has to be asked, is it starting again? 112 automobiles per day average in 2006 burn in the suburbs of Paris, and Jews are again being attacked. (Google: "112 cars day paris suburbs")
Oh, there is so much more...
<quote>Computer games don't affect kids. If Pacman would have affected us as children, we would now run around in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetetive music.</quote>
Anybody want a light show?
Of course not. There just won't be any males left, so you'll be obsolete.
Of course, I'm not sure how well this theory would really work. It seems like a large portion of the female population just can't find a purpose to their life without hooking up with some loser male that they have to "fix".
All comments on whether this is a good/bad thing aside, they clearly have the right algorithms. At a presentation by county officials, I saw a survey done of youth who were brought to the juvenile detention center in Hennepin County, Minnesota (Minneapolis and surrounds). Nearly half had seen a friend or relative murdered. Forget age limits on buying GTA4, we need to find a way to shield kids from real life murder.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Saying prison is full of the low IQ does not mean you can predict anyone with a "low mental state" has a high propensity to commit crime. The difference may be very small, visible in millions but inconseqential in an individual. Or a bias of law enforcement. Or the statistic a figment of your imagination.
Your assertion of race is even more ridiculous. What are these races like in rich segments of society? What are these races like outside the US? Do you understand now that this has nothing to do with race?
As for your prediction, let me tell you about the wonderful predictions I made about Apple stock. Everyone can point to a few times they were right. The question is what percentage of times are you right. The Iowa Prediction Markets won't help you here either: they are just a poll, so if you'd used them at the time of Gallileo, they would have told you the Earth is flat; if you use them on the stock market, they will simply give you the current price, and are thus not much of a prediction at all.
Lies about crimes
A. Murder of Passion (or Impulse) - While some factors can increase this, the more repressive the society and family structure, the worse will be the actual crimes done in this area - and the more useless it is attempting to restrict this. These are rarely repeated.
B. Preplanned Murder - These crimes frequently involve money, perceived wrongs, and emotional problems - these kinds of crimes might be predicted, and are the type that tend to be repeated by individuals if successful or partly successful.
C. Murder by Government (or Political/Religious/Social group) - these crimes are frequently ignored, but if condoned, loosen the strictures for both type A and type B by individuals. Thus, in times of war, riots, deprivation, religious/ethnic conflict, people do things that are unthinkable in other times - these are not always repeated.
Since most murders fall into category A, predicting murder is fairly useless, as at best it works for category B only.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Heh, and people just thought I was morbid.
And then you notice all the crime from people like that HP spying lady, and you get rid of all the females too.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
"Because...I am also a tortoise..."
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Sure, there'd be no war, but there would be serious skirmishes about once a month.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
May. Not will. However, it's a better than zero chance. If you ignore causes or even correlations related to crime, you will certainly not have any chance to find the causes.
If you don't find a cause, and you ignore all the correlations, you can't have a solution.
So, feel free to track all this stuff. Don't lock people up because of it. Learn from it. Find out where our shortcomings are, how some of our folks increase their odds of killing someone.
Please also note the careful difference between the words "homicide", "manslaughter", "murder", and "killing". They are NOT the same word, and have distinct meanings.
Perhaps, but that can be eliminated too, with today's technology. Apparently, lots of younger women are already self-medicating themselves with the Pill, and instead of having a week without any dosage (which causes a menstration), they just keep the dosage up continuously until they feel like having a period (perhaps every 6 months or year).
You have to admit, there'd never be another war on this planet if this happened, and crime would be rare.
The Victorian Age called and it wants its antiquated notions of the female sex back. Since after all a woman head of state never went to war. Then google female gangs and see just how much sugar and spice there is.
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
I once heard my dad slap my mother, so now I'm a potential homicidal maniac. This century just keeps on getting better. BTW, It's mom's B'day tomorrow.
Don't tempt me Bill! >:-|
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit