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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."
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.
What might work in high-density cities in similar to what you see in Japanese cities - small police offices on corners within a certain spread of city blocks, so there's at least one officer on call for any given neighborhood. I live by a police substation in my city, and I can attest that it has made me more diligent about avoiding minor traffic offenses, and it likely helps their response time (I live in what is admittedly not a very good neighborhood).
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
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.
Not for crime. Police cars just give out traffic tickets.
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".
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?
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.
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.
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...
Don't get caught?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
I used to live in an apartment complex where one of the other buildings had one of it's rooms converted into a mini police station. It eas great! Very quiet, nothing ever happened. The place had a bad past (the reason for the station) and a horrible reputation. we couldn't even get anyone to deliver pizza there! After I was there for a few years the city cut back the police force in order to spend money on it's parks.The mini station was closed. Immediately the car break-ins started! We moved out at the end of that lease. They did make the parks pretty nice though...
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.
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.”
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.
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.