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'Moneyball' Approach Reduces Crime In New York City
HughPickens.com writes The NYT reports that NY County District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.'s most significant initiative has been to transform, through the use of data, the way district attorneys fight crime. "The question I had when I came in was, Do we sit on our hands waiting for crime to tick up, or can we do something to drive crime lower?" says Vance. "I wanted to develop what I call intelligence-driven prosecution." When Vance became DA in 2009, it was glaringly evident that assistant D.A.s fielding the 105,000-plus cases a year in Manhattan seldom had enough information to make nuanced decisions about bail, charges, pleas or sentences. They were narrowly focused on the facts of cases in front of them, not on the people committing the crimes. They couldn't quickly sort minor delinquents from irredeemably bad apples. They didn't know what havoc defendants might be wreaking in other boroughs.
Vance divided Manhattan's 22 police precincts into five areas and assigned a senior assistant D.A. and an analyst to map the crime in each area. CSU staff members met with patrol officers, detectives and Police Department field intelligence officers and asked police commanders to submit a list of each precinct's 25 worst offenders — so-called crime drivers, whose "incapacitation by the criminal-justice system would have a positive impact on the community's safety." Seeded with these initial cases, the CSU built a searchable database that now includes more than 9,000 chronic offenders (PDF), virtually all of whom have criminal records. A large percentage are recidivists who have been repeatedly convicted of grand larceny, one of the top index crimes in Manhattan, but the list also includes active gang members, people whom the D.A. considers "uncooperative witnesses," and a fluctuating number of violent "priority targets," which currently stands at 81. "These are people we want to know about if they are arrested," says Kerry Chicon. "We are constantly adding, deleting, editing and updating the intelligence in the Arrest Alert System. If someone gets out of a gang, or goes to prison for a long time, or moves out of the city or the state, or ages out of being a focus for us, or dies, we edit the system accordingly — we do that all the time."
"It's the 'Moneyball' approach to crime," says Chauncey Parker. "The tool is data; the benefit, public safety and justice — whom are we going to put in jail? If you have 10 guys dealing drugs, which one do you focus on? The assistant district attorneys know the rap sheets, they have the police statements like before, but now they know if you lift the left sleeve you'll find a gang tattoo and if you look you'll see a scar where the defendant was once shot in the ankle. Some of the defendants are often surprised we know so much about them."
"It's the 'Moneyball' approach to crime," says Chauncey Parker. "The tool is data; the benefit, public safety and justice — whom are we going to put in jail? If you have 10 guys dealing drugs, which one do you focus on? The assistant district attorneys know the rap sheets, they have the police statements like before, but now they know if you lift the left sleeve you'll find a gang tattoo and if you look you'll see a scar where the defendant was once shot in the ankle. Some of the defendants are often surprised we know so much about them."
I would guess there's relatively little crime within a block of the police station. Police should create a mobile platform and move the police stations to where the crime happens every few weeks or months.
Was the banning of tetraethyl lead in gasoline. Since then crime stats have gotten better and better.
I would very much like to know the racial makeup of that list. Given it came from the police themselves, it certainly leads to questions about how such individuals end up on those lists.
Put the fucking race card away.
Honestly it's a valid question - it's not alleging that it's 100% the case, it's just wondering to what degree racial profiling played into the decision, in a situation where race is very relevant. Our apologies that you're uncomfortable with the issue, though.
I glossed through the lengthy article and didn't see if the DA's "Moneyball" approach is working, and to what extent if it is.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Seriously. Even if the list is racially biased, why assume that that's because of racial bias in compiling the list?
RTFA
they are using arrest records to determine priority in assigning cases and asking for bail. if you have a dozen arrests expect your case to get more attention than being arrested protesting one time
Less crime is great, but these methods presuppose that the DA & the police are working so closely together as to be indistinguishable. If that's a desirable arrangement, we still need someone who is willing to prosecute police misconduct.
This is the DA not the police. So it's more "Look's like you've been in prison before, you've been arrested for serious crime again, and the police say you you've been causing trouble in the neighborhood, let's allocate more resources to prosecute this case." I can see an argument for filtering the input for possible bias from police, but that's supposedly the DA's job already.
I see on slashdot all the time about going back to doing honest detective work where you find out who is really causing trouble in the neighborhood rather throwing out a monitoring dragnet or throwing absurd punishments rather than trying to aim for reforming the person. I have a hard time complaining about this as long as there is monitoring that data is fair and collected/retained in an appropriate manner.
Why wouldn't you put additional resources to stopping an Al Capone over some kid who got caught as a rumrunner. Sounds like they are trying to apply common sense with collected data.
I suppose they are assuming that non-criminals don't get accidentally arrested 12 times, even if they are never convicted.
I think you're missing the point, because if data is really being used how it should be, in the most efficient way, this goes way past "profiling", which is essentially the opposite approach in terms of detail, and heads into "accuracy".
Why are you biased against the impartiality of the police force? Are you perhaps basing your opinion of a group on individual instances of behavior displayed by isolated members of that group?
Hey, don't blame Canada for that ... you guys have been openly ignoring your own Constitution pretty much daily for 13 years. You've probably been quietly ignoring it longer.
Stop and frisk? Border stops within 100 miles of the border? An AG who said Habeus Corpus wasn't a right? Secret courts? Warrantless wiretapping? Blanket surveillance? Parallel construction?
That shit is all on you, and has been publicly supported by your own politicians and much of your citizenry.
If anything, America has been putting on a clinic of how to erode and undermine civil rights, and then exporting that everywhere else.
America ignored her own Constitution on her own terms.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hmmm...this reminds me of the story about operational analysis of bomber armor in WWII. Briefly, the Allies examined bombers that returned from raids, compiled where they had been hit by flak and machine gun fire, and started a program to armor those spots. Then they realized, that the planes that hadn't returned probably had been damaged in the spots that the returning planes had not been, and that's where the armor was needed. In this case, singling out the people who get arrested over and over, while not a bad idea, is focusing on the incompetent criminals - the people who are good at it will get arrested at much lower rates than the ones who are in and out of the system all the time.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
In my opinion, that "problem" is caused by being stuck in a cycle. People who feel disenfranchised and unfairly profiled are less likely to follow the "rules" of a society they feel rejects them. Why would you want to follow the "rules" made by people you believe hate you?
Thus, they are more likely to commit crimes. (Job candidate profiling also means they are less likely to be employed, meaning they take more risk.) But being more likely to commit crimes means they are profiled even more, creating yet more disenfranchisement, and the cycle drills yet deeper, neither side blinking, and both sides saying, "the other guy should straiten up first, THEN I will straiten up also" = STALEMATE.
Politicians and pundits seem too eager to blame than solve the problem. If you can make a case that it's "the other guy's fault", then you escape "responsibility" to change yourself.
Table-ized A.I.
The database contains "more than 9,000 chronic offenders" which include "uncooperative witnesses"? Does anyone else worry about this?
9,000 chronic offenders (PDF), virtually all of whom have criminal records
How can you be a chronic offender and NOT have a record?
Would you consider Charles Barkley a cunting bigot, then? Seriously... so long as we're talking up race we're not putting personal responsibility where it needs to be emphasized. I have friends across the rainbow of color, sexuality, and genders. They all have one thing in common: They are not trash and have a decent sense of self worth. Not one of them would disobey a law enforcement official because they know it's useless and they're the only ones who would get hurt...AND they would face additional charges for fighting in the wrong venue. These idiots in Fergurson are only using the whole Brown fiasco as a smokescreen to their own lawlessness which is what is causing their cries of racist persecution to fall on so many deaf ears.
ignoring your own Constitution pretty much daily for 13 years.
Interesting how thirteen years ago a certain "terrorist" attack happened?
Coincidence?
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
I think you're missing the point
I think the GP's point is that they are "accurately" gathering information on a biased slice of the population.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Did you just not see yourself making the case that it's "the other guy's fault"?
Wall Street, responsible for the global economic meltdown (JPMorgan CHASE, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, etc., etc.), is in Cyrus Vance Jr.'s district, and it was Vance Junior who went after some tiny little Chinese immigrant bank, Abacus Bank, instead of going after a single one of the major players.
I call bullcrap on this!
This is what I refer to as the Bin Laden Playbook: he gave it to us on 9/11, and our political parties and their cronies (and future employers) in the Surveillance Industrial Complex have been profitably running them ever since that day. Pavlov's Dopes, indeed.
Well the second paragraph of the summary makes it pretty clear it isn't just a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". They are repeat offenders of serious crimes. I don't really even get what you mean by "biased slice of the population". Yeah it's biased, because they have to include bad guys in the list. Otherwise what do you mean? Data isn't racist, which was my original point. I'm assuming unless they are the most bigotted people on the planet and somehow programmed that into their algorithm, their lists include a pretty fair percentage of each race, according to their relative rates of committing the crimes they are singling out as important.
That probably isn't the only reason. I'd be willing to bet that the jail's population has a higher percentage of blacks than the city's population.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Moneyball is a sports metaphor where you don't get the flashy big-name players that don't really do anything. You get the unknown, overlooked players for cheap that just know how to win. You do this by using different stats than are typically used by most other teams. For instance, the Oakland A's were big on on-base percentage and recently the LA Kings are big into Corsi (shots attempted differences when a player is on the ice, in other words, puck control).
The "Moneyball" aspect of this is that they are turning DA work on its head. Instead of spreading their resources way too thin and throwing huge sentences at minor drug possession, they are giving them minor plea deals and saving the big guns for the people who the communities are reporting are the troublemakers. By taking out the troublemakers, it reduces the pressure on others to join them in crime, so it results in less crime total.
This is fantastic and should be a model for other communities.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Well the second paragraph of the summary makes it pretty clear it isn't just a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". They are repeat offenders of serious crimes. I don't really even get what you mean by "biased slice of the population". Yeah it's biased, because they have to include bad guys in the list. Otherwise what do you mean? Data isn't racist, which was my original point. I'm assuming unless they are the most bigotted people on the planet and somehow programmed that into their algorithm, their lists include a pretty fair percentage of each race, according to their relative rates of committing the crimes they are singling out as important.
His point is that the police may be racially profiling to begin with. If they are more suspicious of black people, more likely to arrest a black person to begin with, then the data base is going to be artificially skewed towards information about black people. There may be plenty of white people that are doing the exact same thing without ever being caught because they aren't getting stop and frisked and found to be in possession of drugs, for instance.
You mean, doing their actual job instead of trying to make a quick buck? That is actually a very easy technical problem, it's just that there are a lot of politics to it that get in the way of just doing their job.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Why are you biased against the impartiality of the police force?
Because they have guns...
And the beauty of the Second Amendment of the U.S Constitution is that you do too.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
But why do you have to assume they were put there based on race?
Because the NYPD has a long history of racism, and not all of it is in the distant past. The "stop-and-frisk" policy targeted 80% black and Hispanic men in a city where they make up about 25% of the population. The stops were not based on any sort of probably cause, but just on the way people looked and dressed. That didn't stop until last year, and then it was only because of a court order. NYPD policies should be presumed to be racist until proven otherwise.
The DA's job is to get re-elected.
That depends on where you live. The elected DA is only the one at the top of the DA's office. There are many attorney's under them that also receive the monitor "DA" whom are not elected; they do have to balance out cases against how the elected DA sets priorities, but they are more or less just regular attorney's working as prosecuters.
Again, it's all a matter of where you live. Not all areas even allow the top DA to be elected; while other areas have more of the chain in the election routine.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Oh, yah, that makes it all better. And it is really making us safer from the next attack!
It's not a valid question because it's answered in the article. Intelligence doesn't just come from the police. And the article explode if how much better than can be explained here.
Two reasons:
1) Giuliani defeated Dinkins for mayor of NYC
2) Relaxation of gun control
Putting police officers inside giant plastic bubbles and then tilting the whole of Manhattan Island to help them collect bananas is clearly the best approach to fighting crime.
Why this wasn't done years ago is beyond me.
If the likelihood of arrest and conviction are affected by racism, as seems to be the case in the US, then any data derived from said arrests is also going to reflect that same racism. Garbage in, garbage out.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Well the second paragraph of the summary makes it pretty clear it isn't just a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". They are repeat offenders of serious crimes. I don't really even get what you mean by "biased slice of the population". Yeah it's biased, because they have to include bad guys in the list. Otherwise what do you mean? Data isn't racist, which was my original point. I'm assuming unless they are the most bigotted people on the planet and somehow programmed that into their algorithm, their lists include a pretty fair percentage of each race, according to their relative rates of committing the crimes they are singling out as important.
Well the whole story makes it clear that it is a database of "people who look like they could be criminals". One kid got in because he was wearing a red shirt. They're convicted of trivial crimes, like jaywalking. And a disproportionate number of black people are arrested for jaywalking.
A disproportionate number of black people are also arrested for small-time pot possession charges, after the cops illegally search them, even though the pot usage in NYC is the same for blacks and whites. So if black people and white people use drugs in equal proportions, and the DA prosecutes 10 times as many black people as white for drug offenses, that would make it racist, wouldn't it?
The story also says that they put people in the database, with no chance to defend themselves, based on the claims that those people are "gang members" or "troublemakers," by anonymous informants, who are themselves arrested for small-time crimes. Can you give me a definition of a "gang member" that is consistent with the Bill of Rights?
FTA:
the list also includes active gang members, people whom the D.A. considers “uncooperative witnesses,” and a fluctuating number of violent “priority targets,”
“When prosecutors begin to compile databases and start doing so-called ‘smart prosecutions,’ you have to ask who is getting in the databases, what are the criteria and where are the outside checks?” says Steven Zeidman, director of the criminal-defense clinic at the CUNY School of Law. “More than a thousand people are arrested in N.Y.C. each day, and the overwhelming and disproportionate number of them are people of color arrested for ‘broken windows’ type offenses like riding a bike on the sidewalk or jaywalking. I was in court with a kid arrested for jaywalking; the arresting officer was from the gang unit, and he stopped the kid because he was wearing a red shirt that, according to the police, happened to be a gang color. He wasn’t in a gang, but he’s probably now in a database.”
Of course there have been no more terrorist attacks in America - the terrorists are all too busy monitoring other people's telecomms to blow people up.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The underlying assumption is that the the accuracy of the data leads to lower crime. From what I've read, they are just better at tracking some criminals. To lower crime you'd have to be certain that new crimes were being committed by those criminals. But by focusing on a smaller population of criminals, this seems bound to pin crimes on the focus group rather than actually being a deterrent to more savvy criminals that have stayed out of focus.
Has it been demonstrated that crime rates are significantly lower as a result of this tracking?
No.
Just the opposite. When you compare crime rates in NYC with cities that don't have this tracking, they are identical. Crime has been going generally down nationwide, regardless of these programs.
You need to check your timeline - I was born late '70s and I remember the transition, so sure as heck I was affected.
But you are correct - the drop in crime should be leveling off soon(if not already). Now we're into the tougher ways to further reduce crime. One thing that the massive jump in crime did was really exercise our law enforcement abilities.
Heck, I even remember my grandfather using an adapter so he could use the (cheaper) leaded gasoline in his unleaded car. I know now that it ruined the catalytic converter and really screwed with emissions, but hey, I was a pre-teen back then.
Still, the drop was precipitous enough that many state penal systems cancelled lots of planned prison construction, and prison overcrowding is now mostly over. Well, at least for states that didn't try to shove 3 times as many prisoners as their prisons were rated for into them(California).
I don't read AC A human right
The bad actors in Ferguson are simply reinforcing the stereotypes they are trying to knock down. They are the ones responsible for the stereotypes of lawless thugs committing crimes of opportunities.
And when you see HUNDREDS of people committing crimes in a community, it paints a picture of that community. In this case, the cannot live down their own reputation.
IF I were a black person in Ferguson, I would be PISSED off, but not at the Police, but at the fucktards rioting. The problem is, everyone is too fucking busy excusing bad behavior and committing crimes, and nobody is talking about the dead witness (black) in a burnt out car. THAT is what people should be protesting.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just wait until you get mugged, little boy.
On that day, profiling just might start to make sense to you.
If I had a choice between getting mugged, and getting arrested by the cops on fake charges and charged with a felony, I'd rather get mugged. If I get arrested for a felony (like "assaulting" a cop), I'd have to spend thousands of dollars for a lawyer. They might set bail higher than I could afford, and I could stay in jail for months before I'm even convicted of anything (as a few New York Times stories showed). But I don't have to worry, because that mostly happens to people who are black.
After video cameras got popular, there were lots of cases where a cop swore under oath that a person assaulted him, and then the video showed that he was committing perjury. Do you think any of those cops were prosecuted for perjury? Or kicked off the force? Do you want to buy the Brooklyn Bridge?
The cop muggers are more dangerous than the civilian muggers.
Political correctness is used by idiots who either refuse to think
for themselves or are unable to think for themselves.
The real world doesn't conform to how people wish it was. The real
world is how it is, and sometimes it's not pretty. Certain classes of
people are much more likely to commit violent crime, and those
of us who have experience "on the street" KNOW THIS IS TRUE.
Those certain classes include NYC cops.
What do you do when 80% of the crimes are coming from a population represented by 20% of the people? Do you focus on the 80% that commit 20% or the 20% that commit 80%?
I'm not saying that is the case, but in places like Chicago, where the chances of you being killed are somewhere along those lines. And the victims, are equally represented (80% Black). It isn't racism to prosecute people who kill black people.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm a bit shocked at some of these responses. What do you prefer them to do? Ignore their data if it includes too many black people? All they can do is try to be smarter about the people they know are already repeat offenders, and yet somehow everyone is criticizing this... I'm confused.
Do you focus on the 80% that commit 20% or the 20% that commit 80%?
You don't focus on any group because of their race. Blacks do commit a disproportionate number of crimes. If the police used racial profiling, that would almost certainly make law enforcement more efficient. IT IS STILL WRONG. "Efficient law enforcement" is not a higher priority than "free and fair society".
Yeah, because on the day after a guy was not even indicted for killing ablack man over selling loose cigarettes, lord knows it's irrelevant.
...and yet they appear to be doing it. So it's probably worth a "Well done!"
I was impressed with the fact that they had enough of a clue as to be emphasizing how they keep the data fresh and don't rely on stale information.
Sure, justice is supposed to be blind, but that doesn't mean that the DA has to be.
Preface: To simplify, I'm aware there are more racial and ethnic choices than black and white.
A disproportionate number of black people are also arrested for small-time pot possession charges, after the cops illegally search them, even though the pot usage in NYC is the same for blacks and whites. So if black people and white people use drugs in equal proportions, and the DA prosecutes 10 times as many black people as white for drug offenses, that would make it racist, wouldn't it?
The DA would be racist if, when brought forth an equal number of arrests for possession, chose to prosecute one race more than another based only on (or aided by) the color of their skin.
If cases brought to the DA included more repeat offenders for possession for one race than another, it wouldn't be racist to charge them.
If cases brought to the DA included those known to be in gangs, it wouldn't be racist to charge them.
If cases brought to the DA included a segment who were non-cooperative or fled police before or at arrest, it wouldn't be racist to charge them.
The DA isn't out doing stop-and-frisk (which I am not a fan of), but you're arguing selective prosecution. Blacks may be prosecuted more frequently than whites for the same arrests, but there may be other mitigating factors in the DA's decision.
RTFA
they are using arrest records to determine priority in assigning cases and asking for bail. if you have a dozen arrests expect your case to get more attention than being arrested protesting one time
They're also arresting people for minor crimes and pushing them to be informers. If some informer says that you're a troublemaker or a gang member, you go in the database, with no opportunity to defend yourself.
Once you're in the database, the cops harass you with jaywalking arrests and illegal stop and frisks, until you get a dozen arrests.
As the NYT wrote in another story, it's almost impossible to fight these false charges. The DA charges you with a felony that could give you years in jail, keeps you in jail for months pre-trial, and then offers to let you go for time served if you plead guilty to a misdemeanor.
If I get arrested and the cops want me to turn somebody in, I'm going to tell them that there's this guy alen on Slashdot who's a really bad guy.
It's an unrelated issue, though. If the goal is to improve crime statistics, then you go with the data you have. This is not exactly the same as lowering the actual rate of crime. Separate problem, separate solution.
GIGO. There's not much point in making a modern optimized statistical science of acting on bad data.
Preface: To simplify, I'm aware there are more racial and ethnic choices than black and white.
A disproportionate number of black people are also arrested for small-time pot possession charges, after the cops illegally search them, even though the pot usage in NYC is the same for blacks and whites. So if black people and white people use drugs in equal proportions, and the DA prosecutes 10 times as many black people as white for drug offenses, that would make it racist, wouldn't it?
The DA would be racist if, when brought forth an equal number of arrests for possession, chose to prosecute one race more than another based only on (or aided by) the color of their skin.
Are you conceding that a disproportionate number of black people are arrested for possession compared to white people? Because that was demonstrated in the testimony in the stop-and-frisk case before Judge Schendlin, which Slashdot wrote about.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V...
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
That argument is a slippery slope. Say the data is racist. The algorithm is not racist, so what sense does it make to attack the algorithm while ignoring the data?
Even if the results of the algorithm are racially skewed, is the result worse than the status quo? I seriously doubt it. Remember that the problem this algorithm is trying to solve is not whether there is racial bias, but whether crime can be prevented by targeting repeat offenders.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I would very much like to know the racial makeup of that list. Given it came from the police themselves, it certainly leads to questions about how such individuals end up on those lists.
1. The article links to a document that describes the system and how it works in detail.
2. The article and linked document describe the function of the lists as prioritization lists for prosecutors after arrest, not used by the police to target people for arrest. If you think about it, that's logical: the police do not need to help the city make a list of people to target for arrest. If the police are biased in targeting people for arrest, they can still stop and arrest those people whether they are on the list or not.
3. Given the finite resources of the NYC criminal justice system, any data-driven system designed to focus more resources on critical repeat-offenders will by necessity reduce the focus on everyone else. That means while any system can have racial bias including this one, its more likely to reduce the impact of that bias simply due to the practical reality of reducing the need for drag-net style law enforcement. Even if the impact is small, more time spent on publicly vetted priorities is less time available to do anything else.
Yes, BOTH. I've caught myself profiling also at times.
Once I saw a youtube vid of a black boy throwing a cat against a wall. Immediately I thought of his "ghetto upbringing" and poor parenting as the cause. Then it occurred to me I had done some bad things to cats also as a boy. He was no stupider than the average boy of ANY color. (Turned out the vid was fake, by the way.)
(I apologize, cats. I was young and foolish and full of excess testosterone and had no girlfriend.)
Table-ized A.I.
DA prosecution for possession =/= arrests for possession.
"Stop and Frisk" may be frisking a disproportionately high percentage of blacks, placing more of them in a position to be prosecuted -- but that has nothing to do with the DA's decision to prosecute (or not prosecute) an individual once the arrest has been made.
I generally like this approach for the DA, however I do have a few concerns.
1. From the wording it sounds like they might be prioritizing some people who are merely uncooperative witnesses.
2. They are using a list of "offenders" that includes people which do not have a conviction. Legally speaking that should mean that such a person is not an offender.
3. Given the issues of racial profiling, and how they gather stats this is likely only improving the criminal outcomes in parts of society that are already getting undue extra attention. That doesn't mean the system shouldn't be used but I would very much like to see them work a lot more on seeking crimes being commited by groups which are not currently profiled.
"Efficient law enforcement" is not a higher priority than "free and fair society".
Racial profiling does not take away from a free and fair society though.
Well, it depends exactly what you mean by racial profiling since the term encompasses so many possible actions. Going around harassing black people "just in case" is counter to a free and fair society. But making law enforcement more efficient by looking at factors like race, sex, age, wealth, hairstyle, clothing, gang affiliation, etc is fine.
Even if you assume racism is involved at various steps of the process, it's hardly "garbage" data.
Then there's the possibility that areas with racist law enforcement genuinely have more crime, either due to people committing crimes in protest, or due to cops becoming racist due to the criminals who they interact with. In that case the "racist" data is completely valid in helping predict future crime levels.
If I had a choice between getting mugged, and getting arrested by the cops on fake charges and charged with a felony, I'd rather get mugged.
Pretty sure your chances of the former are higher.
Let's put it this way... would you rather experience an encounter of unknown outcome with a mugger, randomly selected from all muggings, or an encounter of unknown outcome with a cop, randomly selected from all encounters with cops?
But I don't have to worry, because that mostly happens to people who are black.
It happens mostly to people who commit serious crimes or are around people who commit serious crimes, not to people who are black. There is overlap of course.
Going around harassing black people "just in case" is counter to a free and fair society.
Until the courts stopped them last year, this is exactly what the NYPD was doing.
Even if they are completely racist in their arrests, so what? The strategy of the system is to identify serious repeat offenders and take them off of the streets.
If there is a corresponding decrease in crime, it is mostly safe to say that the strategy is effective. If five years from now there is a negligible decrease or an increase in crime, we can start having a serious discussion about the merits of the system.
The article gives a couple of good examples of how the system has been used. Here is one example, there are others that you can review for yourself...
"In May we created our crime-strategies unit. Wilmington has one of the highest violent-crime rates in the country, but 1 to 2 percent of the people are doing 70 percent of the crimes. We’ve taken dozens of high-risk offenders off the street.”
Presumably, within a few months to a year, they will be able to check crime stats and determine of the absence of those high-risk offenders has had a measurable impact on crime.
I think what you will see is that it does. The reality is that the truly anti-social, dangerously violent, willing to use force on other human beings types of criminals are a small percentage of the overall criminal population. If you focus on removing those severe cases, it will take a while for the population to produce more of them.
To a lesser extent, the same thing happens with property crimes. Let's say you have a guy who likes to smash car windows and steal things. He has a few friends who see him getting away with it and they adopt the same behavior. They tend to work a particular neighborhood. If you take those guys out of the equation, that neighborhood will see a decrease in that kind of crime for a little while. But if you let it go unchecked, it will increase. Other criminals will start to realize, "Hey, let's go down to VehicleTheftVille and get some center console change" because the police do not seem to be doing anything about it, and everyone else is doing it.
This is the eternal rabbit-hole of political correctness. I'll leave racist police asside for the moment. If the given starting point is that cannot POSSIBLY commit more crimes than any other group because even thinking this thought is racist, then any kind of data set that shows this HAS to be racist on its face.
So, if 80 of witnessed murders are reported to have been committed by a perpetrator with SkinColorA and 20 were reported to have been committed by a perpetrator with SkinColorB, the police should ignore 60 of the first group of murders in order to remain balanced? What a load of shit!
I guess we could also make a similar claim that a small town northern US city (that generally have single digit black populations) should not allow something like 90% of their white students to attend school in order to remain "non-racist" in their educational policies.
or maybe the "innocent" guy was killed in the act of committing a felony assault on someone known to be armed with a handgun. I guess that would qualify as a guy was killed just for being an idiot.
You mean they are gathering data on people reported to have committed crimes? How dare the police and courts track such a thing.
The sad truth is it's all related to the 80/20 rule or the Pareto principle, 80% of the crimes are committed by 20% of the people; 64% of the crime is commited by 4% (.8^2/.2^2) and 51% is commited by 0.8% (.8^3/.2^3). If you can the correct people off the street, the results are amazing, if you waste your time on the wrong people, the results is futility. With the numbers they're achieving, they are hitting some of the correct people, and race is a red herring.
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Since they've achieved a 50% drop in crime, it's obviously not GIGO.
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As someone said - what percentage of crime is committed by blacks?
Further, even if you don't believe that look at this map...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
Then do man ethnic overlay. Except for midtown, it strongly correlates with race, and if you stop and frisk in high crime neighborhoods, on even a proportional basis to the neighborhood, you will end up with a minority bias/ MOST crime in NYC is in minority neighborhoods...
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Other than that.....?
Sure it is. Every problem someone else has to solve that doesn't involve a measurable result (e.g. the bridge collapsed) is very easy, technically. If only they had my intelligence unburdened by their silly rules.
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Racial profiling leads to higher number of convictions for the group that you're profiling compared to the rest of the population. If you only shake down black and brown people, then your arrests/convictions will be heavily skewed. This has been shown to be the case with drug arrests/convictions -- drug use is pretty even across ethnic groups (I don't have the reference handy), but the majority of drug convictions are black and brown people.
You forgot the part where the SkinColorA's commit 90% of their crimes against other SkinColorAs, so by ingore the 60 SkinColorA criminals (for equality), you have disporportionately shifted criminal victimization toward SkinColorAs.
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That the list contains people without convictions means that you can be added, and your sentence affected, by things you haven't been proven guilty of: Due Process Fail.
That stuck out like a big sore thumb to me. It's police and prosecutorial misconduct, pure and simple. (I'm appalled that this wasn't brought up until this far down in the discussion.)
Other items, just from the little bit quoted here:
- 'people whom the D.A. considers "uncooperative witnesses,"'
One of the big differences between the US and English systems is that in the US you are NOT REQUIRED to risk your own life to do the police department's work by testifying about what you've seen. (You aren't allowed to lie, but you are allowed to be silent.) The police often can't, or won't, provide you with protection against criminal retaliation for your testimony, at the same time that they block you from obtaining or using the means to protect yourself. Don't want to be a martyr? Just say nothing.
But these guys are turning that principle on its head: If they decide you're an "uncooperative witness", into the database you go, to be harassed and minutely scrutinized from then on, threatened with arrest at any slip-up, treated differently, and far worse, than other citizens. That's selective enforcement at its worst, and denial of civil rights under cover of law.
Then there's "gang members". If some policeman don't happen to like you and the friends you hang out with, they he can define your group as a "gang", regardless of whether you've committed any crime, and treat you and your group as they would big-time repeat offenders. Any bets on whether this gets used against political opponents of the prosecutors' party?
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This isn't armchair engineering, this is just doing their fucking job. Police get distracted from doing their job because they deal with bullshit revenue generation tasks like seizing anything that could plausibly be tied to drugs and predatory traffic tickets with no ties to actual road safety. Violent crime has been going down for decades, so the actual job should be getting easier.
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This could be a case of mistaken nomenclature. Sure, it sounds like its just a guy that won't talk, but I doubt they put everyone on there that doesn't talk or the list would be a mile long, which is what they're trying to avoid. However, that guy, thats always around crime and has been questioned regarding 10 gang incidents, but is supposedly not in the gang, and won't talk? It signifies affiliation. It also points out which areas are under severe threat from gang intimidation.
I don't know, they didn't really go into too much detail about the term, but its mentioned alongside gang activities, so that's my guess. Point is that we're being really pedantic about two words that weren't expounded upon as a reason to scrap what appears to be a pretty level-headed approach to prosecution. Sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me.
Yes, The Commish was a TV cop drama, but one of their strengths was to do policing based on numbers and statistics. OK, they took the normal 'over the top' abilities of TV, but the basics were good. TV today is getting basically 'instant DNA scans', to the extent that McCoy wished was in this tricorder! The same with stats on TV shows.
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Yes, but I was pointing out the absurdity of looking only at number of arrests by race as a determinant of racism.
Most here know, that statistics are not useful if the sample size is below a certain number.
But, did you know that the statistic can not usefully be -applied- to a group less than that number?
In other words, statistics can not be applied to individuals. (Unless the samples were all that individual.)
-That- is what is wrong with "profiling" used wrongly.
In fact it is the basis for racism. Humans have an instinct to assume the individual in front of them is the same as others that look the same, because that is safer in primitive wild conditions. But it is not a good way to think in civilized times, because it is often wrong.
The police should treat all people the same, because they can not know what they are facing. They should be polite but watch them carefully. Relaxing if the person looks one way and being tense when they look another way, is not good on either side. A criminal can maskerade as an honest person. An honest person can maskerade as a criminal, if they like the dress style.
The question does not actually have anything to do with race, religion or politics... 8-)