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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.
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?
Interesting stuff. Here's a link to the full text:
d f
http://130.58.240.179:8080/~erek/minorityreport.p
"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
1) Convicted criminals are the only ones that concern probation officers.
2) Convicted criminals are the only ones they are likely to have the data to fill most of the fields for.
3) Probation officers have a job to do that does not involve tracking random citizens.
Thus, it seems unlikely it could be used for anything *but* the intended purpose without a fairly serious rework.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
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.
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.