Data Entry Errors Resulted In Improper Sentences

shrik writes "Slate has a look at the efforts of Emily Owens, in 2005 a Ph.D student in economics at the University of Maryland, who 'came across thousands of inconsistencies and errors in the sentencing recommendations provided to judges' by the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy. Quoting: 'The sentencing guidelines for judges were based on a work-sheet [PDF] that "graded the severity of a convict's crime and his risk to society", ostensibly to make the rulings meted out more objective in nature. But on carefully studying her data, Owens noticed something wasn't adding up — the system seemed to be producing 1 error in every ten trials. She also realized that this "recommendation system" actually mattered: crimes and criminals analyzed to be quite similar were resulting in systematically different punishments correlated with the work-sheet.' The source of these discrepancies was ultimately found to be a simple, but very significant, PEBKAC: 'More than 90 percent of errors resulted from the person completing the work sheet [usually the DA, but signed off by the defense attorney] entering the figure from a cell next to the correct one. ... The remaining errors came mostly from incorrect choice of criminal statute in calculating the offense score and from a handful of math errors (in operations that were literally as simple as adding two plus two).' Timo Elliott's BI Questions Blog lists the morals of the story."

Comments

isn't that why we have judges

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the reason we have judges because no algorithm is perfect?

Re:isn't that why we have judges

[conureman]

That one in ten cases is incorrectly sentenced by this system says to me that some of the attorneys are filling these forms out; When the clerks take care of it, they usually get it right.

Re:isn't that why we have judges

[mark_hill97]

A good lawyer is expensive, some criminals can't afford good ones. Instead they end up with overworked public defenders who might have read the case file before going into the court.

Re:isn't that why we have judges

[ElectricTurtle]

How many lawyers are modding today? Whoever is modding this down is in denial. I've worked for a law school, a law firm, and independent lawyer, and a state bar association, and I can vouch that the parent is absolutely correct. Lawyers are good at arguments, not book keeping.

Re:isn't that why we have judges

[ultranova]

Maybe not class as in the classical sense with aristocracy etc, but class as in how much money you can get together (by yourself or your direct environment).

Actually, since old aristocracy was made of those rich enough to be able to afford their own private army, or at the very least a horse and armor at the very bottom, I'd say it's class justice in every sense of the word.

(nearly) 1% of the population behind bars is an awful lot and compares very bad with the rest of the world.

Yes, but making both the rich and the poor equal before law would require for the state to pay for all the expenses of the trial - yes, even for the losing side, since otherwise the rich can afford to try defend themselves even if victory is not certain, while the poor can't - which sounds like socialism, which is evil. Furthermore, to actually pay for this would require taxation, which is stealing and thus also evil.

Compared to these horrible evils, surely you must agree that locking up or executing innocent or at least undeserving people is far better? Injustice and a huge wrongfully convicted prison population are the price of freedom!

Garbage in...

[Hognoxious]

... garbage out.

Justice is only available to the rich

[cryfreedomlove]

This is another example of why impartial and fair justice is really only available to the rich. A rich defendant could afford to pay his high powered defense attorney team to scrutinize this level of detail. This is not happening for poor defendants who are forced to settle for noble, but overworked, public defenders.

Re:Justice is only available to the rich

[Itninja]

Does that also mean that, when a rich person does get convicted and go to jail, they must have really done it? Whereas a poor person who goes to jail is likely just a victim of the system?

Re:Justice is only available to the rich

[benwiggy]

Are you suggesting that reading the correct cell from a spreadsheet table is a level "detailed scrutiny", which public defenders are incapable of?

As a lawyer has posted above, it is malpractice not to check this.

Whilst I agree that justice is what you pay for it, this isn't a great example.

Re:Justice is only available to the rich

[FlightTest]

No, it means a rich person is much more likely to get the correct sentence, for better or for worse. I read most of TFA so I may have missed it, but it didn't seem to say whether longer or shorter sentences were more likely. It did say that race wasn't a factor in the error, and implied that the errors were non-intentional.

Re:PEBKAC

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know what it meant to turn in one's geek card, but I googled it. I also didn't know which bathroom to use at Outback Steakhouse. I also didn't know to spit out my gum before falling asleep. I didn't know the twist from The Crying Game. At one point I didn't even know my own name. At no point did I announce these personal revelations to the world - we didn't have twitter yet.

It's called "learning". Welcome to the club.

Re:Legal Malpractice

[kj_kabaje]

Holy sh!t. So 1 of every 10 cases in Maryland should result in malpractice suit? That's a stunningly low quality of lawyers in this PhD's sample.

Re:PEBKAC

[wastedlife]

I vote you can keep your geek card, because you googled it. If you had just posted "PEBKAC, what the fuck does that mean?! Damn kids and their txt speak", we would kindly ask you to hand in your geek card and resume lawn-guarding duties.

Re:Legal Malpractice

[Chris Mattern]

My experience with lawyers is that they will be more than happy to explain anything you want in more detail

They get to charge $300+ an hour to sit there and explain things to you. Damn straight they're "more than happy" to do it!

Re:PEBKAC

[Anonymous Coward]

PICNIC trips of the tongue a bit more easily than PEBKAC...

That's kind of the point. Since it is a complicated-sounding acronym, you can say it to the person's face: "Uh, huh. Uh, huh. Yeah, I've seen this before. Sounds like a PEBKAC error. Here's what you need to do..."
Much better than: "Uh, huh. Uh, huh. Yeah, I've seen this before. Sounds like a PICNIC error"
"Haha, that's funny, what's it stand for?"
"Uh, problem in chair, not in computer"
"Asshole"

Re:PEBKAC

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ok, the chick from The Crying Game didn't know which bathroom to go to either.