Slashdot Mirror
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."
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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 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.
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.
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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?
"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?"
"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.
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.
...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.
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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!
"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.
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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.
well, many places in europe (with virtually no legal gun ownership) are in fact much safer than the usa. and the cops aren't that trigger happy either.
that disproves your theory.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
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.
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."
usa and russia were fed the same propaganda, have pretty much the same level of stupid nationalism, a comparable gap between rich and pood, high crime rates, anything-goes capitalism, and until about two years ago even the same currency.
that's why i live in the eu.
Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
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
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.
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.
... 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)
True. We were always much better with the longbow.
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
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?
Nota Bene : I still think this show sucks.
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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.
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!
...before he was elected. More than 750,000 people might still be alive.
tcboo