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Data Entry Errors Resulted In Improper Sentences

Posted by kdawson on from the month-here-a-month-there dept.

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."

11 of 138 comments (clear)

  1. Garbage in... by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... garbage out.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Re:isn't that why we have judges by conureman · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
  3. Justice is only available to the rich by cryfreedomlove · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Justice is only available to the rich by Itninja · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
    2. Re:Justice is only available to the rich by FlightTest · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Merde, il pleut encore!
  4. Re:isn't that why we have judges by mark_hill97 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:PEBKAC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  6. Re:isn't that why we have judges by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
  7. Re:PEBKAC by wastedlife · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
  8. Re:Legal Malpractice by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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!

  9. Re:PEBKAC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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"