Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings(nature.com)
nature.com
Mathematicians urge colleagues to boycott police work in wake of killings
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01874-9
240 comments
There is no austerity. Here is state-and-local spending as a percentage of GDP from 1970 to present: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/courses-images-archive-re...
And here is GDP in 2010 dollars: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location...
State and local governments went from spending 10% of $23,000 per person to 15% of $55,000 per person. Per-person state and local spending went up by a factor of 3.5, even after adjusted for inflation.
With respect to public infrastructure specifically, there has been no austerity. For example, here is a graph of NYC subway ridership from 1970 to 2014: https://i0.wp.com/plot.ly/~millerstephen/4.png?w=773&crop=0%.... Subway ridership is up 75% since 1980. The capital budget during the 1980s averaged $3.4 billion annually in 2020 dollars: https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/rescue.pdf (fig. 5). The 2015-2019 capital program (5 years) averaged about $6.5 billion 2020 dollars. So a 90% increase in capital spending for a 75% increase in ridership. Punchline: MTA is so massively wasteful, that wasn't enough. The system deteriorated the whole time leading to catastrophic failure in the last few years.
The London transit system, by contrast, spends about $3.2 billion in capital expenditures to run a system that is very similar in terms of age, size, etc: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2019-20.pdf. Despite spending half as much money, London has been able to significantly grow the network while keeping maintenance current and maintaining on-time performance.
Honestly, invocations of "starve the beast" and "austerity" are nothing more than gaslighting. It's a cop-out for why our public services are so shitty, even though we spend vastly more on them than we used to spend.
And here is GDP in 2010 dollars: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?location...
State and local governments went from spending 10% of $23,000 per person to 15% of $55,000 per person. Per-person state and local spending went up by a factor of 3.5, even after adjusted for inflation.
With respect to public infrastructure specifically, there has been no austerity. For example, here is a graph of NYC subway ridership from 1970 to 2014: https://i0.wp.com/plot.ly/~millerstephen/4.png?w=773&crop=0%.... Subway ridership is up 75% since 1980. The capital budget during the 1980s averaged $3.4 billion annually in 2020 dollars: https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/rescue.pdf (fig. 5). The 2015-2019 capital program (5 years) averaged about $6.5 billion 2020 dollars. So a 90% increase in capital spending for a 75% increase in ridership. Punchline: MTA is so massively wasteful, that wasn't enough. The system deteriorated the whole time leading to catastrophic failure in the last few years.
The London transit system, by contrast, spends about $3.2 billion in capital expenditures to run a system that is very similar in terms of age, size, etc: http://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-budget-2019-20.pdf. Despite spending half as much money, London has been able to significantly grow the network while keeping maintenance current and maintaining on-time performance.
Honestly, invocations of "starve the beast" and "austerity" are nothing more than gaslighting. It's a cop-out for why our public services are so shitty, even though we spend vastly more on them than we used to spend.
My favorite example: the American government spends more on health care than any other OECD government, for much less coverage.
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm
It's probably not a great example, because we spend more for health care across the board, not just publicly. Doctors and nurses here make more money, and we deliver more procedures (especially outpatient procedures) than the rest of the OECD.
It’s a fair point. But are the procedures improvements over standards of care abroad? If not, my assumption was that it fit in the same category as the transit spending detailed above: more money thrown into the system, but worse outcomes. The reasons for the extra money required are complex in both cases.
> Subway ridership is up 75% since 1980. The capital budget during the 1980s averaged $3.4 billion annually in 2020 dollars: https://wagner.nyu.edu/files/faculty/publications/rescue.pdf (fig. 5). The 2015-2019 capital program (5 years) averaged about $6.5 billion 2020 dollars. So a 90% increase in capital spending for a 75% increase in ridership. Punchline: MTA is so massively wasteful, that wasn't enough. The system deteriorated the whole time leading to catastrophic failure in the last few years.
Just because the spend per rider increased over that time doesn't mean the system is getting what it needs though. A newer system will usually function better than a starved system years later naturally because of deferred maintenance and other aging infrastructure ailments even if the per rider numbers have increased. Comparing it just on the per rider spend assumes that the earlier number is enough.
Just because the spend per rider increased over that time doesn't mean the system is getting what it needs though. A newer system will usually function better than a starved system years later naturally because of deferred maintenance and other aging infrastructure ailments even if the per rider numbers have increased. Comparing it just on the per rider spend assumes that the earlier number is enough.
The London underground was created in 1863 though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground
Though I suppose you would have to look at the state of thr system in the 1980s. NYC may have had more deferred maintenance.
Though I suppose you would have to look at the state of thr system in the 1980s. NYC may have had more deferred maintenance.
One major thing is probably that the NYC subway did 24 hour operation (recently stopped due to covid-19) so there wasn't an easy period for maintenance tasks where the London Underground seems to run 5am-12am so there's a nice 5 hour block for maintenance.
I mean you're correct--an alternative explanation would be that the baseline sample in 1970 was already in "austerity." That's why I compared it to the London system.
One major difference that might explain the difference at least partially is New York's system runs 24/7 [0] where London's shuts down for 5 hours every night. Maintenance gets much easier when there's a solid block of time every night for smaller tasks.
[0] More or less, they've stopped during COVID but it's not a great time to do maintenance.
[0] More or less, they've stopped during COVID but it's not a great time to do maintenance.
Prop 13 (passed in 1978) reduced budgets substantially for local governments in California --- roughly 60% state wide [1]. Perhaps that's what they were referring to.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13...
It did not reduce local budgets by 60%, it merely reduced local government share of property taxes by (not quite) 60%, initially, as the Brown administration and Democrat legislature leadership clawed money back to state control.
(The local share of property tax was not defined in Prop 13; this is strictly how the Democrats in power chose to implement Prop 13.)
(The local share of property tax was not defined in Prop 13; this is strictly how the Democrats in power chose to implement Prop 13.)
So, why are we spending so much for so little?
Inefficiencies or corruption when building new things?
Pension benefits for an aging workforce?
Pure incompetence at the top or pure incompetence at the bottom of the org chart?
Inefficiencies or corruption when building new things?
Pension benefits for an aging workforce?
Pure incompetence at the top or pure incompetence at the bottom of the org chart?
A mix of inefficiency and corruption.
Transit capital projects in the USA, for instance, are typically delayed for many years by lawsuits over environment laws, etc. For instance, near the nation’s capital: https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/transportation/pu...
> “PLTC and its member companies should not be required to finance the hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs for issues that are out of its control, not of its making …,” Risley wrote.
> More than 970 days of project work were affected by delays caused by the MTA, he wrote, which included third-party lawsuits, delayed right-of-way acquisition, and changes to regulations and third-party agreements after the project started.
And on the other hand, there’s straight up corruption and fraud. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/nyregion/cuomo-andy-byfor...
> “They are working here?” Mr. Cuomo asked. Not a soul was in sight. “Yes, sir,” the man replied, nodding vigorously. “They must be very short people,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Or invisible.” About 130 people were being paid to work until 11 p.m., though their day had clearly ended well before that.
Transit capital projects in the USA, for instance, are typically delayed for many years by lawsuits over environment laws, etc. For instance, near the nation’s capital: https://bethesdamagazine.com/bethesda-beat/transportation/pu...
> “PLTC and its member companies should not be required to finance the hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs for issues that are out of its control, not of its making …,” Risley wrote.
> More than 970 days of project work were affected by delays caused by the MTA, he wrote, which included third-party lawsuits, delayed right-of-way acquisition, and changes to regulations and third-party agreements after the project started.
And on the other hand, there’s straight up corruption and fraud. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/nyregion/cuomo-andy-byfor...
> “They are working here?” Mr. Cuomo asked. Not a soul was in sight. “Yes, sir,” the man replied, nodding vigorously. “They must be very short people,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Or invisible.” About 130 people were being paid to work until 11 p.m., though their day had clearly ended well before that.
Why would you compare 2014 ridership to 2020 capital spending? The same charts you posted show a 40% increase in ridership with only a 20% increase in capital spending from 1982-2004.
Obviously the capital spending boost that is happening right will only be reflected in future ridership.
Obviously the capital spending boost that is happening right will only be reflected in future ridership.
I’m comparing 2014 ridership to 2015 capital spending, but with the money expressed in 2020 dollars.
The London subway shuts down at night.
It is tempting to blame the lack of funds for the problems in the US public infrastructure, but problematic management seems to play a much bigger role. Almost any public infrastructure project around me: paving local roads, repairing a bridge or doing the Big Dig takes much longer than planned and ends up with huge cost overruns. And is plagued by corruption, cronyism or incompetence (often, pick at least two).
Yes, we should rebuild the infrastructure. If more money is required we should find it. But we should find a way that holds the bureaucrats accountable on both the costs and the schedule; otherwise we will be throwing good money after the bad. My 2c.
Yes, we should rebuild the infrastructure. If more money is required we should find it. But we should find a way that holds the bureaucrats accountable on both the costs and the schedule; otherwise we will be throwing good money after the bad. My 2c.
Perhaps obstructionism and attacks on government as the problem -- instead of clearheaded, reasonable governance -- has destroyed the ability for government to provide solutions.
That way would be: do what Germany did before the 90s and the privatization wave.
Every city/county had their own "Bauhof" with a couple of construction workers and machines for all kinds of maintenance that a city had: snow plowing in the winter, pothole fillings and greenkeeping in the summer, pipe laying/maintenance, traffic lights and general lights maintenance, other infrastructure upkeep.
Today much of this is mandatory outsourced to the lowest bidder, with no way of accounting for regionality or quality.
To make it worse, cities and counties used to have capable public servants in architecture and supervision, which meant that for those projects where external help was needed (think construction of new projects) that work could be properly supervised and issues either prevented in the planning stage or caught during construction and remedied before that became too expensive. Nowadays, thanks to more and more budget cuts, pay in public service is a third to a half of the private sector which means that even if there were a budget no one would apply. In IT the situation is even more dire, which is why almost all major government IT projects fail, with the additional complexity that most IT projects have way too many stakeholders and no leadership.
We as Western societies need to roll back that privatization mandate, at least for areas where it has obviously failed.
Every city/county had their own "Bauhof" with a couple of construction workers and machines for all kinds of maintenance that a city had: snow plowing in the winter, pothole fillings and greenkeeping in the summer, pipe laying/maintenance, traffic lights and general lights maintenance, other infrastructure upkeep.
Today much of this is mandatory outsourced to the lowest bidder, with no way of accounting for regionality or quality.
To make it worse, cities and counties used to have capable public servants in architecture and supervision, which meant that for those projects where external help was needed (think construction of new projects) that work could be properly supervised and issues either prevented in the planning stage or caught during construction and remedied before that became too expensive. Nowadays, thanks to more and more budget cuts, pay in public service is a third to a half of the private sector which means that even if there were a budget no one would apply. In IT the situation is even more dire, which is why almost all major government IT projects fail, with the additional complexity that most IT projects have way too many stakeholders and no leadership.
We as Western societies need to roll back that privatization mandate, at least for areas where it has obviously failed.
> For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD.
> For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc.
Education isn't part of LA City government, education comes from school districts which are not funded or controlled by cities in California (if any Mayoral candidate in California other than SF tells you they're going to fix the schools, they're either lieing or unaware of the job of their office; SF is an exception because they are a combined city and county and school districts are supervised by the counties in which they reside)
Same with healthcare and transit --- those agencies are separate from cities too, so city funds don't go there.
> For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc.
Education isn't part of LA City government, education comes from school districts which are not funded or controlled by cities in California (if any Mayoral candidate in California other than SF tells you they're going to fix the schools, they're either lieing or unaware of the job of their office; SF is an exception because they are a combined city and county and school districts are supervised by the counties in which they reside)
Same with healthcare and transit --- those agencies are separate from cities too, so city funds don't go there.
And this is exactly where the "Defund the Police" movement comes from and seems like an extremely good movement to pursue - shift that budget balance back in favor of specialized agencies that can better support social needs rather than forcing it all onto the police force. I really just wish it had gotten a better name since that title for the idea really divides people before they even open their minds.
Defunding the police is generally unpopular where I live. My big city is growing at about 22% decade over decade and will likely surpass San Jose in population over the next 10 years. It is also the lowest density big city in the US. In order to support the growing population the police force must continue to grow as well. The fastest growing area of the city is also the least policed. This not result of negligence from the city but just the geographic direction the city is growing towards and the funding limitations to meet the growing needs of the community. There are plans to put a precinct in my area of the city, which is strongly wanted, but it won’t happen if the police are defunded.
What are the current home zoning vs planned updates/build for this area?
San Jose has issue with single family units over dominating the area; the need for denser housing options hasn't abated, nor for the surrounding county and the greater bay area. That has to be planned with local Transpo options, and now you enter the quagmire of 4 transportation agencies systems in the South Bay at least across several modes.
San Jose has issue with single family units over dominating the area; the need for denser housing options hasn't abated, nor for the surrounding county and the greater bay area. That has to be planned with local Transpo options, and now you enter the quagmire of 4 transportation agencies systems in the South Bay at least across several modes.
The land area of my big city is massive, so there is no risk of running out of land. The problem with that is the increases of traffic and commute times. The area where I live is also absolutely dominated by single family residences. Developers have been building 500+ houses per year in the 5 mile radius of my house over the last decade and space for more single family residences in this location is running out. Developers are turning from single family dwellings towards apartment complexes. The current residents in the area are strongly opposed to the development of multi family units that will only further congest already unbearable traffic conditions. The city had to widen roads to accommodate the rapidly growing population but keeps putting it off.
> In order to support the growing population the police force must continue to grow as well.
Do you have a source for this claim? I mean we can all claim it is intuitive but just how many police, how "well funded", what equipment, and what jurisdiction?
Do you have a source for this claim? I mean we can all claim it is intuitive but just how many police, how "well funded", what equipment, and what jurisdiction?
It’s based on participation of people in things like city council attendance, bond package votes, participation on local Facebook pages, and so forth. No, I don’t have actual numbers.
> since that title for the idea really divides people before they even open their minds.
Hence the brilliant onion headline, "‘So, It Means Making The Police Lose Their Homes And Forcing Them To Get A Divorce?’ Says Nation Still Struggling To Understand How Defunding The Police Works"
https://www.theonion.com/so-it-means-making-the-police-lose-...
Hence the brilliant onion headline, "‘So, It Means Making The Police Lose Their Homes And Forcing Them To Get A Divorce?’ Says Nation Still Struggling To Understand How Defunding The Police Works"
https://www.theonion.com/so-it-means-making-the-police-lose-...
The US actually spends a low amount of money on policing compared to the EU, where police kill fewer people. Further, the US also has a low number of police officers.
https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2019/01/09/charts-poli...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
The defund the police narrative isn’t based on any actual examination of US police spending, or general public spending. The key issues are instead police unions, lack of police training in the US, impunity for police abuses, etc
Cambridge NJ is often cited as a model of reform. But I am not sure they reduced spending. Instead they disbanded and reformed their police.
https://blog.skepticallibertarian.com/2019/01/09/charts-poli...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...
The defund the police narrative isn’t based on any actual examination of US police spending, or general public spending. The key issues are instead police unions, lack of police training in the US, impunity for police abuses, etc
Cambridge NJ is often cited as a model of reform. But I am not sure they reduced spending. Instead they disbanded and reformed their police.
> The key issues are instead police unions, lack of police training in the US, impunity for police abuses, etc
Police unions, poor training and qualified immunity are really serious issues - but ones that are intractable to fight for on the national stage due to political gridlock. Just breaking up the unions as they stand right now and enforcing transparent employment history for law enforcement would make worlds of difference, but the action can't be taken unilaterally by a particular district - that district can ensure that incident reports are preserved but officers moving into the district may have had their employment history purged.
Defunding the police is an actual policy decision that can be made on a local scale to address issues of over policing and start reinvesting in crime prevention rather than punishment.
Police unions, poor training and qualified immunity are really serious issues - but ones that are intractable to fight for on the national stage due to political gridlock. Just breaking up the unions as they stand right now and enforcing transparent employment history for law enforcement would make worlds of difference, but the action can't be taken unilaterally by a particular district - that district can ensure that incident reports are preserved but officers moving into the district may have had their employment history purged.
Defunding the police is an actual policy decision that can be made on a local scale to address issues of over policing and start reinvesting in crime prevention rather than punishment.
> Defunding the police is an actual policy decision that can be made on a local scale to address issues of over policing and start reinvesting in crime prevention rather than punishment.
Can you give an example of a country that does what you recommend? If you can’t, what evidence do you have that it is the solution?
I’m not American. My criticism above is that the movement appears to have developed a policy idea that is not used in any country with a successful policing track record.
As for your claim that individual districts can’t take action....why? Cambden did. They’re hardly perfect, but it’s an improvement. They’re a local area.
And this story shows that when they did try cutting funding, before the reforms and it didn’t solve the problem. Only a concerted reform effort did.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-city-disband...
Comment above was heavily downvoted, but no one has provided a meaningful reply to the stats. The numbers are clear. Compared to places with better policing, the US has a smaller number of officers per capita, and spends less.
The US does spend much more on prisons however, which is surely a mistake. To your point on shifting focus away from punishment this is one of the first places I would look to cut money: prisons.
In the UK, police killed only 3 people in 2019. There has been surprisingly little inquiry as to how they do it. I get that US police are bad, and so spending less money to get less of them might be an improvement. But to actually solve the problem it seems that changing the police is the better answer. And this will necessarily be local because most of the important stuff in the US is local.
Can you give an example of a country that does what you recommend? If you can’t, what evidence do you have that it is the solution?
I’m not American. My criticism above is that the movement appears to have developed a policy idea that is not used in any country with a successful policing track record.
As for your claim that individual districts can’t take action....why? Cambden did. They’re hardly perfect, but it’s an improvement. They’re a local area.
And this story shows that when they did try cutting funding, before the reforms and it didn’t solve the problem. Only a concerted reform effort did.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-jersey-city-disband...
Comment above was heavily downvoted, but no one has provided a meaningful reply to the stats. The numbers are clear. Compared to places with better policing, the US has a smaller number of officers per capita, and spends less.
The US does spend much more on prisons however, which is surely a mistake. To your point on shifting focus away from punishment this is one of the first places I would look to cut money: prisons.
In the UK, police killed only 3 people in 2019. There has been surprisingly little inquiry as to how they do it. I get that US police are bad, and so spending less money to get less of them might be an improvement. But to actually solve the problem it seems that changing the police is the better answer. And this will necessarily be local because most of the important stuff in the US is local.
> I’m not American.
Well then.
- US police are above the law, and have free union-provided legal counsel.
If a city prosecutes an officer, he will sue them right back, and the union will threaten the careers of city councilpersons, DAs and judges at the next election. A perfect circle of corruption.
- DA's and judges are elected, so political from Day One of their careers. Public unions hold 20% or more of the votes and vote in a bloc. Either play with the unions, or finish second.
- the US is the most successful multicultural large country in history, but that makes things more complicated.
- everybody who wants a handgun has one, or two. A lot of people driving around illegally have a loaded gun under their seat.
Well then.
- US police are above the law, and have free union-provided legal counsel.
If a city prosecutes an officer, he will sue them right back, and the union will threaten the careers of city councilpersons, DAs and judges at the next election. A perfect circle of corruption.
- DA's and judges are elected, so political from Day One of their careers. Public unions hold 20% or more of the votes and vote in a bloc. Either play with the unions, or finish second.
- the US is the most successful multicultural large country in history, but that makes things more complicated.
- everybody who wants a handgun has one, or two. A lot of people driving around illegally have a loaded gun under their seat.
I know that. The US police are a mob. It’s very apparent, from outside looking in.
How does that relate to my argument? My point was that attempting to tackle those factors is the actual solution.
(Would need a source on your 20% claim though. Endorsed by the police union is an appeal to voters outside the union, not an appeal to union share of electorate)
How does that relate to my argument? My point was that attempting to tackle those factors is the actual solution.
(Would need a source on your 20% claim though. Endorsed by the police union is an appeal to voters outside the union, not an appeal to union share of electorate)
> Public unions hold 20% or more of the votes
No, they don't. Public employees don’t, outside of a few localities with extremely high concentrations (which are usually military, which isn't unionized) make up 20% of the electorate, much less public sector unions holding 20% of votes.
> and vote in a bloc
No, they don't. Law enforcement and corrections unions often don't even lean toward the same major party as most other public sector unions.
No, they don't. Public employees don’t, outside of a few localities with extremely high concentrations (which are usually military, which isn't unionized) make up 20% of the electorate, much less public sector unions holding 20% of votes.
> and vote in a bloc
No, they don't. Law enforcement and corrections unions often don't even lean toward the same major party as most other public sector unions.
In case you didn't notice, every election there's lawn signs saying "endorsed by the Police Union" or similar.
So get your facts straight.
If you want to see DA politics in action, watch just about any Law & Order episode when they discuss optics. Those "stories" are based on current affairs.
So get your facts straight.
If you want to see DA politics in action, watch just about any Law & Order episode when they discuss optics. Those "stories" are based on current affairs.
> In case you didn't notice, every election there's lawn signs saying "endorsed by the Police Union" or similar.
That doesn't contradict anything I said. There are signs saying that not because public sector unions as a whole either make up the 20% of the electorate you've claimed or vote in a unified block across different public sector unions as you've claimed, but because the general public, and especially voters that consider “law and order” an important concern, are particularly likely to be swayed by law enforcement union endorsements.
> If you want to see DA politics in action, watch just about any Law & Order episode when they discuss optics. Those "stories" are based on current affairs.
...often, quite badly. I've got a Political Science degrees from a subprogram specialized in the pragmatics of US electoral politics at all levels; “Law & Order” is, I know, entertaining to a lot of people, but it's not really a guide to reality on, well, anything.
That doesn't contradict anything I said. There are signs saying that not because public sector unions as a whole either make up the 20% of the electorate you've claimed or vote in a unified block across different public sector unions as you've claimed, but because the general public, and especially voters that consider “law and order” an important concern, are particularly likely to be swayed by law enforcement union endorsements.
> If you want to see DA politics in action, watch just about any Law & Order episode when they discuss optics. Those "stories" are based on current affairs.
...often, quite badly. I've got a Political Science degrees from a subprogram specialized in the pragmatics of US electoral politics at all levels; “Law & Order” is, I know, entertaining to a lot of people, but it's not really a guide to reality on, well, anything.
ok, PoliSci man:
Governments employ 20 percent or more of workers in nine states
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/on-numbers/scott-tho...
Governments employ 20 percent or more of workers in nine states
https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/on-numbers/scott-tho...
> Governments employ 20 percent or more of workers in nine states
The claim was public sector unions, not government employees. And the claim was 20% of votes, not 20% of workers. A substantial share of government employees are not unionized; this is particularly true of federal government employees; and a substantial share of voters are not employed (some unemployed, but more out of the workforce, looked students, homemakers, and retirees.)
And nine states leave 41, or 82% of the total, where even that far-from-what-you-originally-claimed situation still doesn't apply.
The claim was public sector unions, not government employees. And the claim was 20% of votes, not 20% of workers. A substantial share of government employees are not unionized; this is particularly true of federal government employees; and a substantial share of voters are not employed (some unemployed, but more out of the workforce, looked students, homemakers, and retirees.)
And nine states leave 41, or 82% of the total, where even that far-from-what-you-originally-claimed situation still doesn't apply.
a city prosecutes an officer, he will sue them right back
[deleted]
> private education, private healthcare, privatized transit
After defunding the police, they'll have private security as well.
After defunding the police, they'll have private security as well.
We already have that https://mynorthwest.com/152537/growing-number-of-seattle-nei...
40 years of austerity? Last I checked federal, state and local budgets are several-fold bigger than 40 years ago, even accounting for inflation.
>On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than letter ones
Likely a large portion of what they saw was a product of racial and political demographics. Whites are a larger percent of rural populations than cities. [0] White people on average rate police much better than non-whites. [1] Of course whites may rate police better because they live in rural areas, but the gap in satisfaction between whites and blacks is too great to be accounted for by more whites living in rural areas. Also rural people are more likely to be conservative and conservative people rate police much higher. Rural officers are in less danger in rural areas, so they may not need to be as alert and forceful because they know their lives are not in danger as much.
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/06/27/census-... [1] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/09/29/the-racial-confid...
Likely a large portion of what they saw was a product of racial and political demographics. Whites are a larger percent of rural populations than cities. [0] White people on average rate police much better than non-whites. [1] Of course whites may rate police better because they live in rural areas, but the gap in satisfaction between whites and blacks is too great to be accounted for by more whites living in rural areas. Also rural people are more likely to be conservative and conservative people rate police much higher. Rural officers are in less danger in rural areas, so they may not need to be as alert and forceful because they know their lives are not in danger as much.
[0] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/06/27/census-... [1] https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/09/29/the-racial-confid...
> The last 40 years of austerity politics in the US
Wikipedia[0] says that "[austerity] is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both." That strikes me as a correct definition of 'austerity'. But we've not had any spending cuts in real terms or in terms of GDP. Nor have we had tax increases for the past "40 years" -- sure, Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama raised taxes, but Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Trump cut taxes.
Yes, reducing budget deficits has been a stated goal of most Presidents since 1980, but that's mostly been lip service. None bothered to actually try. President Clinton did manage to reduce the deficit, but not because he wanted or tried to, but because of the unexpected revenue growth caused by the unexpected economic growth caused by the unexpected IT revolution.
> For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD.
What was that in 1980? Was there a step in this, say, around 1996? Did it go up in 1996 when Federal funding for 100,000 new police officers dried up? I.e., did President Bill Clinton's well-meaning 100,000 police officer initiative have unintended consequences?
> On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than larger ones [1].
I don't doubt this! We saw in Ferguson, MO, that the police was giving out an inordinate number of traffic fines every year! It's almost... exactly as if... they were paying themselves with that -- a terrible corruption. As I recall the number of citizens in NYC who have fines in arrears is staggering. Police department funding via fines is a form of corruption, and strongly indicative of police departments being too large.
And the invention of civil asset forfeiture (in the 80s, IIRC), and the rise in its use (in the mid-90s, IIRC), also seems like police (and prosecutors) paying themselves with poor people's assets. And it is invariably the poor who have been hardest hit by civil asset forfeiture.
The police have to be sized appropriately to:
The police departments of most large U.S. cities are almost certainly oversized at present. One of the first steps in remediating some of iniquities of our system should be to end police department funding via fines and civil asset forfeiture (by simply ending civil asset forfeiture -- as clearly unconstitutional a practice as any). In some States fine revenue is shared with the State, but perhaps the amounts of the fines should go down and the percentage that goes to the issuing jurisdiction should go down significantly. At the very least the parameters of traffic violation fining need fine-tuning. Once the police can only be funded by general revenue of the local town/city, and the towns/cities cannot fund themselves with fines / civil asset forfeitures, we'll see a proper reconsideration of police funding.
I.e., the police need to be not so much defunded as right-funded, and today that would generally mean spending less on police. I'm not sure that in 1993 it was the case that the police needed to be funded more, though I'd be happy to see evidence to the contrary. Crime rates did go down significantly in the 90s, but those extra ~80,000 new police officers are not the only cause of that, and probably not even a major cause at all. The main cause of the fall in crime rates in the 90s seems to have been demography.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity
Wikipedia[0] says that "[austerity] is a set of political-economic policies that aim to reduce government budget deficits through spending cuts, tax increases, or a combination of both." That strikes me as a correct definition of 'austerity'. But we've not had any spending cuts in real terms or in terms of GDP. Nor have we had tax increases for the past "40 years" -- sure, Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama raised taxes, but Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Trump cut taxes.
Yes, reducing budget deficits has been a stated goal of most Presidents since 1980, but that's mostly been lip service. None bothered to actually try. President Clinton did manage to reduce the deficit, but not because he wanted or tried to, but because of the unexpected revenue growth caused by the unexpected economic growth caused by the unexpected IT revolution.
> For example, in the city of LA, 53% of the city's unrestricted general fund budget went to the LAPD.
What was that in 1980? Was there a step in this, say, around 1996? Did it go up in 1996 when Federal funding for 100,000 new police officers dried up? I.e., did President Bill Clinton's well-meaning 100,000 police officer initiative have unintended consequences?
> On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than larger ones [1].
I don't doubt this! We saw in Ferguson, MO, that the police was giving out an inordinate number of traffic fines every year! It's almost... exactly as if... they were paying themselves with that -- a terrible corruption. As I recall the number of citizens in NYC who have fines in arrears is staggering. Police department funding via fines is a form of corruption, and strongly indicative of police departments being too large.
And the invention of civil asset forfeiture (in the 80s, IIRC), and the rise in its use (in the mid-90s, IIRC), also seems like police (and prosecutors) paying themselves with poor people's assets. And it is invariably the poor who have been hardest hit by civil asset forfeiture.
The police have to be sized appropriately to:
- investigate and close most cases
- support investigations appropriately
- provide a minimum of neighborhood police
presence to deter crime and build a rapport
with the community
The police departments of most large U.S. cities are almost certainly oversized at present. One of the first steps in remediating some of iniquities of our system should be to end police department funding via fines and civil asset forfeiture (by simply ending civil asset forfeiture -- as clearly unconstitutional a practice as any). In some States fine revenue is shared with the State, but perhaps the amounts of the fines should go down and the percentage that goes to the issuing jurisdiction should go down significantly. At the very least the parameters of traffic violation fining need fine-tuning. Once the police can only be funded by general revenue of the local town/city, and the towns/cities cannot fund themselves with fines / civil asset forfeitures, we'll see a proper reconsideration of police funding.
I.e., the police need to be not so much defunded as right-funded, and today that would generally mean spending less on police. I'm not sure that in 1993 it was the case that the police needed to be funded more, though I'd be happy to see evidence to the contrary. Crime rates did go down significantly in the 90s, but those extra ~80,000 new police officers are not the only cause of that, and probably not even a major cause at all. The main cause of the fall in crime rates in the 90s seems to have been demography.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austerity
I don't know enough to agree or disagree, but to me having academics even ask questions on the ethics of their work is the most important thing; if one's work affects the real world then you can't duck responsibility for it.
Yes, academics should be asking questions about the ethics of their research. This is particularly when it is applied. Some of the research discussed in this article raises legitimate concerns regarding ethics that need to be addressed if it is going to be of benefit to society, and there are good reasons to believe that it can be a detriment to society regardless of how it is pursued.
That being said, I am tired of people vilifying the police and taking indiscriminate actions against them. The reality is that law enforcement performs a valuable role in society, yet it is also an institution that has serious issues to resolve. Those issues will be difficult to address with an antagonistic relationship. It creates barriers to questioning when the police are needed, what roles are better fulfilled by other institutions, and how we ensure that officers are accountable to the communities that they serve.
I suspect that it would be far more effective to place pressure on the government rather than the police simply because the scope of the problem is outside of the domain of the police. It is legislation that dictates what roles are taken by the police and which are taken up by other agencies (as well as how funding is allocated between those agencies). Legislation also determines the what and how of police accountability, which limits the consequences that officers face due to acts of negligence or malice.
That being said, I am tired of people vilifying the police and taking indiscriminate actions against them. The reality is that law enforcement performs a valuable role in society, yet it is also an institution that has serious issues to resolve. Those issues will be difficult to address with an antagonistic relationship. It creates barriers to questioning when the police are needed, what roles are better fulfilled by other institutions, and how we ensure that officers are accountable to the communities that they serve.
I suspect that it would be far more effective to place pressure on the government rather than the police simply because the scope of the problem is outside of the domain of the police. It is legislation that dictates what roles are taken by the police and which are taken up by other agencies (as well as how funding is allocated between those agencies). Legislation also determines the what and how of police accountability, which limits the consequences that officers face due to acts of negligence or malice.
Academics often ask ethical questions about their work. There are a huge number of physicists who devote time to non-proliferation work, cleaning up the ethical detritus from generations past.
Well even that is not an ethically straightforward issue. Nuclear proliferation reduces the frequency and typical intensity of violent conflicts, in exchange for risking an extremely high intensity conflict.
It's also about the only direction left. There's hardly any lawful, paid proliferation to go around.
That responsibility includes helping the police (and others) do their jobs well. It's just as much about participation as it is non-participation.
Well, as a mathematician (or I think, more accurately in the context this article is talking about, a statistician). You do have a responsibility to make sure you work is used honestly and correctly. If someone is taking findings and tools you've developed and misapplying them to make the world less just then you need to take a stand and make sure they're used properly.
Also I think the US has a real problem with valuing personal well being over societal well being somehow being warped into being a virtue. If you cheat on your taxes and manage to save 5$ while depriving the US Government of 20$ then you're a hero - this slippery slope has led acting in a morally grey manner for your own benefit being seen as a strength which makes it much more societally acceptable for people who contribute to systems of oppression (facial recognition and people tracking, supporting the spread of disinformation, helping to erase painful truths from public consciousness) to be viewed as "winners" so long as they walk away with a fat check.
It's hard for me to tell if this has always been a valued virtue, but having grown up in the US it certainly was an apparent virtue that I was imbued with - somehow we need to work at changing that.
Also I think the US has a real problem with valuing personal well being over societal well being somehow being warped into being a virtue. If you cheat on your taxes and manage to save 5$ while depriving the US Government of 20$ then you're a hero - this slippery slope has led acting in a morally grey manner for your own benefit being seen as a strength which makes it much more societally acceptable for people who contribute to systems of oppression (facial recognition and people tracking, supporting the spread of disinformation, helping to erase painful truths from public consciousness) to be viewed as "winners" so long as they walk away with a fat check.
It's hard for me to tell if this has always been a valued virtue, but having grown up in the US it certainly was an apparent virtue that I was imbued with - somehow we need to work at changing that.
I don't believe it's an 'American' thing so much as what exists without community/communitarian cultural values embedded in society.
50% of the rules for our socialisation are encoded in the 'ether' which is to say the rituals, norms, policies, procedures of what is considered 'normative' in any region, organisation, community. In most 'old world' countries you see these rules as thick as sauce everywhere, and of course they can be suffocating and often a roadblock to progress. But usually they provide the foundations for good social behaviour as well.
The Scandinavian countries are like this - visiting those places it feels a little bit like a nation-sized cult, where everyone is obeying an invisible set of rules. But it would appear differently to them obviously, if their instinct is to closely match their peers behaviour and adhere to whatever norms are there. The Swedish press, in particular, doesn't feel like a 'free press' as we would have it, but rather a loose set of groups acting in an ordained fashion for the 'good of society'. They act like a collective version of the BBC or CBC - the official mandate is not there ... but the cultural mandate is just the same. From the outside, it looks like a lack of 'freedom of the press' and maybe paternalistic, but they would see it differently of course.
In the 'new world', absent those implied rules, and possibly with the support of neoliberal ideals, and also the notion that 'everyone is doing it' - it's just easy to think in more narrow, self-oriented terms, and so you get these kinds of attitudes.
I do however believe that most researchers are a fairly pro-social, moral bunch, and I also believe that most police are as well and their intentions are mostly good and so I'm doubtful of existential concern here, other than to say ... we need to 'keep an eye on it' and think about issues thoughtfully. I'm more concerned about unecessary surveillance, lack of judicial oversight and process, than any kind of algorithm.
50% of the rules for our socialisation are encoded in the 'ether' which is to say the rituals, norms, policies, procedures of what is considered 'normative' in any region, organisation, community. In most 'old world' countries you see these rules as thick as sauce everywhere, and of course they can be suffocating and often a roadblock to progress. But usually they provide the foundations for good social behaviour as well.
The Scandinavian countries are like this - visiting those places it feels a little bit like a nation-sized cult, where everyone is obeying an invisible set of rules. But it would appear differently to them obviously, if their instinct is to closely match their peers behaviour and adhere to whatever norms are there. The Swedish press, in particular, doesn't feel like a 'free press' as we would have it, but rather a loose set of groups acting in an ordained fashion for the 'good of society'. They act like a collective version of the BBC or CBC - the official mandate is not there ... but the cultural mandate is just the same. From the outside, it looks like a lack of 'freedom of the press' and maybe paternalistic, but they would see it differently of course.
In the 'new world', absent those implied rules, and possibly with the support of neoliberal ideals, and also the notion that 'everyone is doing it' - it's just easy to think in more narrow, self-oriented terms, and so you get these kinds of attitudes.
I do however believe that most researchers are a fairly pro-social, moral bunch, and I also believe that most police are as well and their intentions are mostly good and so I'm doubtful of existential concern here, other than to say ... we need to 'keep an eye on it' and think about issues thoughtfully. I'm more concerned about unecessary surveillance, lack of judicial oversight and process, than any kind of algorithm.
People are boiling this down to "less crime = good". Like if a mathematician can design a deployment system such that the percentage of crimes where an arrest is made increases from 15% to 20%, how can that be a bad thing?
What if every single one of those additional arrests is a Black person? Well that might require an additional look. It's possible that it's all Black people doing those crimes. It's also possible that the mathematician built an algorithm anchored on years of arrest data from racist cops doing racial profiling.
Will the mathematician be able to say, "hey cops can we take a second look?". No. Can the police be trusted to dig into the nuance themselves? Also no. Is racism active and documented in police departments across the country? Yes.
Should everyone who has any ability to do so stand up and say, we won't support this shit, which is what these mathematicians are doing? I think yes, but that's obviously my opinion.
What if every single one of those additional arrests is a Black person? Well that might require an additional look. It's possible that it's all Black people doing those crimes. It's also possible that the mathematician built an algorithm anchored on years of arrest data from racist cops doing racial profiling.
Will the mathematician be able to say, "hey cops can we take a second look?". No. Can the police be trusted to dig into the nuance themselves? Also no. Is racism active and documented in police departments across the country? Yes.
Should everyone who has any ability to do so stand up and say, we won't support this shit, which is what these mathematicians are doing? I think yes, but that's obviously my opinion.
Statisticians will be the best of all the disciplines at teasing out that sort of bias. If the police are going to be racially biased they don't need statisticians to help them. The addition of statisticians is only going to increase the number of people who are uncertain about the model. There are two broad paths here:
(1) Statisticians predict where crimes are likely to happen for the police using data.
(2) Police predict where the crimes are likely to happen using highly biased guesswork.
The statisticians are being irresponsible pushing the police towards (2). Option (1) can be de-biased, can be debated, its effects can be assessed and its parameters can be tweaked over time.
This is a choice between two options and the people signing on to this letter are arguing for the worse one. They link a bunch of news articles, but the academic complaint seems to be that the model says "assume crimes happen in high crime areas". That isn't a very scary model, and if anyone has an alternative they should be pushing it towards the police, not holding it back.
(1) Statisticians predict where crimes are likely to happen for the police using data.
(2) Police predict where the crimes are likely to happen using highly biased guesswork.
The statisticians are being irresponsible pushing the police towards (2). Option (1) can be de-biased, can be debated, its effects can be assessed and its parameters can be tweaked over time.
This is a choice between two options and the people signing on to this letter are arguing for the worse one. They link a bunch of news articles, but the academic complaint seems to be that the model says "assume crimes happen in high crime areas". That isn't a very scary model, and if anyone has an alternative they should be pushing it towards the police, not holding it back.
I think this is a good point, however over time I believe less and less of option (2) will be used. Option (1) will become ubiquitous, and it is important it is done well. The researchers signing the letter should be exactly the ones helping improve the models used, as they obviously care enough to consider the inherent biases and societal effects.
Just because they choose to "opt out", it doesn't mean everyone else will. It leaves the task to a smaller pool of competent people (best case), or unscrupulous people out to make a quick buck or push an agenda (worst case).
Just because they choose to "opt out", it doesn't mean everyone else will. It leaves the task to a smaller pool of competent people (best case), or unscrupulous people out to make a quick buck or push an agenda (worst case).
> It's also possible that the mathematician built an algorithm anchored on years of arrest data from racist cops doing racial profiling.
That possibility is explicitly excluded since the data comes from crimes reported by victims, not investigations initiated by police officers.
That possibility is explicitly excluded since the data comes from crimes reported by victims, not investigations initiated by police officers.
Minorities are less comfortable calling the police in the first place.
Do you have any data to back up that claim, other than anecdotal "evidence"?
Here's some real data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpa11.pdf
Across all races and Hispanic origin, American Indians and Alaska Natives (15%) and persons of two or more races (15%) had the highest rates of reporting crime or neighborhood disturbances to the police. No statistical difference was observed between the percentage of white (9%) and black (7%) persons reporting a crime or neighborhood disturbance to police in 2011.
Also, perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but Appendix Table 4 suggests that minorities are much more satisfied with police response than the average.
Here's some real data: https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/rpa11.pdf
Across all races and Hispanic origin, American Indians and Alaska Natives (15%) and persons of two or more races (15%) had the highest rates of reporting crime or neighborhood disturbances to the police. No statistical difference was observed between the percentage of white (9%) and black (7%) persons reporting a crime or neighborhood disturbance to police in 2011.
Also, perhaps I'm reading it wrong, but Appendix Table 4 suggests that minorities are much more satisfied with police response than the average.
I think the massive protests over the last few years indicate that at least one large class of minorities (Black folks) are not “much more satisfied” with the police
Quick search,
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/police-...
And then there is the fact that illegal immigrants do not call the police for their fears.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/police-...
And then there is the fact that illegal immigrants do not call the police for their fears.
> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/police-....
3 people "screened and analyzed" 1.1 million calls and found out that there was a (presumably temporary) effect on minorities after one much-discussed incident involving minorities? The rest is cherry-picked examples and wild conjecture and not thorough analysis of the data.
> illegal immigrants do not call the police for their fears.
Um, that's because they're illegal and has nothing to do with racism.
3 people "screened and analyzed" 1.1 million calls and found out that there was a (presumably temporary) effect on minorities after one much-discussed incident involving minorities? The rest is cherry-picked examples and wild conjecture and not thorough analysis of the data.
> illegal immigrants do not call the police for their fears.
Um, that's because they're illegal and has nothing to do with racism.
It doesn't look great when you are presented with evidence then try to find some reason to disbelieve it.
I disagree, I think that's how we should expect dialogues to proceed. To uncritically accept any evidence presented to you is a much less effective method for reaching the truth.
An illegal British person is going to face far less scrutiny than an Indian migrant from Central America.
Arrest data includes both.
What about racist victims?
They are complaining about "racial bias" in predictive policing products. This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics. If reality doesn't support the ideology, reality must be ignored. This is the sorry state of academia nowadays.
I don't think that's accurate at all. These algorithms are only as accurate as the data being input into them. The current system of policing is deeply flawed and as a result the "data collected from crime statistics" will be skewed by these inherent, systemic biases. Mathematical optimization against a flawed dataset of this kind is highly likely to create a feedback loop of increasing bias with terrible human consequences.
This seems like a plausible criticism, but it also seems like a plausible criticism of all data and derivates about human beings (and probably other things).
It _is_ a plausible criticism of all data and why we want such large (and diverse) sets of them.
source: work with data and am not terrible at my job
source: work with data and am not terrible at my job
Clearly you haven't seen crime or police data. It's truly, truly awful. That, and the people running analysis on it are just as bad:
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/chicago-police-arrested-more...
Garbage in crunched by garbage is still garbage out.
https://www.chicagoreporter.com/chicago-police-arrested-more...
Garbage in crunched by garbage is still garbage out.
Are you suggesting that data cannot be biased? If so, might I suggest you try reading an elementary guide to statistics? Heck, even a blog post would do.
I think many of the mathematicians would agree with:
>This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics.
They disagree that crime statistics are reflective of where crime occurs. They are more reflective of where police officers are and where crimes are most easily spotted. For example, the racial disparities in policing crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.
Predictive systems that read in biased data will produce biased data.
>This "racial bias" is composed of data collected from crime statistics.
They disagree that crime statistics are reflective of where crime occurs. They are more reflective of where police officers are and where crimes are most easily spotted. For example, the racial disparities in policing crack cocaine versus powder cocaine.
Predictive systems that read in biased data will produce biased data.
> They are more reflective of where police officers are and where crimes are most easily spotted.
The article says: MacDonald argues that PredPol uses only crimes reported by victims, such as burglaries and robberies, to inform its software. “We never do predictions for crime types that have the possibility of officer-initiated bias, such as drug crimes or prostitution,” he says.
The article says: MacDonald argues that PredPol uses only crimes reported by victims, such as burglaries and robberies, to inform its software. “We never do predictions for crime types that have the possibility of officer-initiated bias, such as drug crimes or prostitution,” he says.
That doesn't mean reports are completely independent. Isn't it obvious that the perception of whether the police will do anything is going to affect the reporting?
Wouldn't that affect it in an inhibitory way, though? Black areas would be reporting less crime than actually occurs- so if reported crime rates there are still higher, that tells us something?
Just as a thought experiment, it could be that lesser crimes are not reported because the police don't take them seriously, which leads to more criminals committing major crimes, which are mostly reported.
By lesser crimes I don't mean trivial things that provide an excuse to harass non-criminals and give "broken window" policing a bad name, but actual crimes which aren't major violent crimes.
By lesser crimes I don't mean trivial things that provide an excuse to harass non-criminals and give "broken window" policing a bad name, but actual crimes which aren't major violent crimes.
I would guess that the murder rate data is pretty complete.
"It is simply too easy to create a ‘scientific’ veneer for racism."
It seems, law enforcement was using data to create their own reality.
It seems, law enforcement was using data to create their own reality.
No, it seems certain mathematicians simply assume this to be the case without any scientific argument behind it.
Perhaps it's just too easy to call something "racism" just because we don't like it?
Perhaps it's just too easy to call something "racism" just because we don't like it?
[deleted]
You are engaging in circular reasoning.
African Americans are killed by police at the same or lesser rates than other races. However, they are killed at much higher absolute rates because they commit a significantly greater amount of crime. It doesn't take a PHD in mathematics to figure this out.
Here is just one data source from NYC: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_plan...
Subjects firing on Police: 79% Black
Subjects killed by Police gunfire: 69% Black
If you want to tackle Black crime, start with decriminalising drugs, and then getting Black fathers back into marriage and raising their children.
Destroy the idea that being law-abiding, studying hard, and being regularly employed is 'acting white'. Scale back welfare to make all these things more attractive, and restrict immigration to direct more job opportunities to African Americans instead of Latin American and Indian migrants.
Here is just one data source from NYC: http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_plan...
Subjects firing on Police: 79% Black
Subjects killed by Police gunfire: 69% Black
If you want to tackle Black crime, start with decriminalising drugs, and then getting Black fathers back into marriage and raising their children.
Destroy the idea that being law-abiding, studying hard, and being regularly employed is 'acting white'. Scale back welfare to make all these things more attractive, and restrict immigration to direct more job opportunities to African Americans instead of Latin American and Indian migrants.
In support of your argument: Obama has said in his 'fatherhood speech': "We know the statistics - that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioral problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves."
Almost 65% of black children are raised without a father (white: 24%). Together these numbers imho give a much better explanation towards black crime and disadvantages than inherent bias.
Almost 65% of black children are raised without a father (white: 24%). Together these numbers imho give a much better explanation towards black crime and disadvantages than inherent bias.
There is no question that the advancement of science has been good for humanity as a whole.
Using math to improve the effectiveness of the police is a good thing. This effort - however well intended maybe - would throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Using math to improve the effectiveness of the police is a good thing. This effort - however well intended maybe - would throw out the baby with the bathwater.
There is likewise no question that many individual scientists and mathematicians have engaged in rank psuedoscience to apply a seemingly rigorous veneer to state abuses. Crucially, this does not necessarily depend on the malfeasance of the scientist (although that helps). The root of the problem here is that American police cannot be trusted as good-faith collaborators in any academic research. Any academic research done with police has an unnacceptably high risk of being weaponized against innocent people.
> Using math to improve the effectiveness of the police is a good thing.
There isn't a mathematical definition for "police effectiveness" and any attempt at a quantitative metric for that sort of thing should be viewed with intense skepticism. If your "police effectiveness measure" is skewed towards making more arrests, then that metric clearly has problems and, if used by an actual US police force, would just result in excessive violence and lawless arrests against innocent black people. This is just an example but the risk is real. The fact that such a metric might be theoretically possible is not a good enough reason for engaging in research which will affect the lives of real people.
The only scientists who should be collaborating with police departments are sociologists and psychologists - and, as the hoary history of psychology demonstrates, even they should be treated suspiciously.
> Using math to improve the effectiveness of the police is a good thing.
There isn't a mathematical definition for "police effectiveness" and any attempt at a quantitative metric for that sort of thing should be viewed with intense skepticism. If your "police effectiveness measure" is skewed towards making more arrests, then that metric clearly has problems and, if used by an actual US police force, would just result in excessive violence and lawless arrests against innocent black people. This is just an example but the risk is real. The fact that such a metric might be theoretically possible is not a good enough reason for engaging in research which will affect the lives of real people.
The only scientists who should be collaborating with police departments are sociologists and psychologists - and, as the hoary history of psychology demonstrates, even they should be treated suspiciously.
Using math to improve the effectiveness of police is not necessarily a good thing, because this kind of works really works to perpetuate proactive policing and over-policing, as well as encodes bias.
So maybe address the biases?
People who live in areas that experience high incidence of criminal activity also want to have crime reduced. They want someone to establish order—when you have a vacuum, someone will fill it, usually someone with even less oversight, though occasionally you can luck out with a benevolent dictator of sorts.
So yes people in those areas want policing —though they may also want some reform as well. Few people want no police. They know that’s a recipe for a power vacuum and the domino effect that has.
People who live in areas that experience high incidence of criminal activity also want to have crime reduced. They want someone to establish order—when you have a vacuum, someone will fill it, usually someone with even less oversight, though occasionally you can luck out with a benevolent dictator of sorts.
So yes people in those areas want policing —though they may also want some reform as well. Few people want no police. They know that’s a recipe for a power vacuum and the domino effect that has.
And solving world hunger is simple. Maybe feed the people?
The biases are deep and insidious. They exist in each and every one of us. "Addressing" them is a complicated issue.
The biases are deep and insidious. They exist in each and every one of us. "Addressing" them is a complicated issue.
Well, when you're witnessing multiple instances of officers willingly and enthusiastically assaulting defenseless and innocent citizens/journalists on the street every day, you're past the point of "bias" correction.
These instances are not the result of some nebulous ingrained tendency to view others as less than themselves, they're the result of a coordinated and deliberate attempt to assert power.
Your assertion that removing police would create a "vacuum" assumes incorrectly that there is currently a sense of "order" established. This is not the case, as there is no set of behaviors black men in particular can adopt which will not result in their extrajudicial execution. Police are more accurately viewed as an occupying militia and I see no reason to believe it would just as soon be replaced by something similar.
These instances are not the result of some nebulous ingrained tendency to view others as less than themselves, they're the result of a coordinated and deliberate attempt to assert power.
Your assertion that removing police would create a "vacuum" assumes incorrectly that there is currently a sense of "order" established. This is not the case, as there is no set of behaviors black men in particular can adopt which will not result in their extrajudicial execution. Police are more accurately viewed as an occupying militia and I see no reason to believe it would just as soon be replaced by something similar.
In France there were similar issues with the police vs the yellow vests.
(Anti-Riot)Police see themselves as the entity that establishes order at the cusp of disorder.
When you have these kinds of confrontations (it could be internecine for all I care) you’re going to see that kind of human interaction. Neither person is a robot and thus the results are less than ideal.
What is worse is a power vacuum and the resulting gangs and warlordism (unless the community stands up its own local police force) but we’re back to policing.
(Anti-Riot)Police see themselves as the entity that establishes order at the cusp of disorder.
When you have these kinds of confrontations (it could be internecine for all I care) you’re going to see that kind of human interaction. Neither person is a robot and thus the results are less than ideal.
What is worse is a power vacuum and the resulting gangs and warlordism (unless the community stands up its own local police force) but we’re back to policing.
It was frankly amazing to see how utterly silent US media was on the yellow-vests movement. Do you have any good retrospective sources that I can read up on about those, I think my media experience with it was hearing about it once on NPR and then never hearing it mentioned again except in the form of a neo-facist related movement.
Please cite some statistics for such sweeping claims. That every other fool repeats a mantra doesn’t make it true.
I am unclear what statistics you're interested in, but would be happy to look into it if you can clarify which claim I made that you dispute.
It depends on what your implicit model of policing is. I think the real issue is that most police departments in the US are commonly dual-tasked with providing violent crime prevention _and_ front line social services.
In this setting, it's less clear which "side of the force" is most impacted by the scientific input, but I think it might be reckless to simply cut them off without finding a better model for providing some of their more critical social services. In particular drug, mental health and domestic abuse interventions which sadly seems to be a very large portion of their workload.
In this setting, it's less clear which "side of the force" is most impacted by the scientific input, but I think it might be reckless to simply cut them off without finding a better model for providing some of their more critical social services. In particular drug, mental health and domestic abuse interventions which sadly seems to be a very large portion of their workload.
This depends on how you define "effectiveness". E.g. one of the measures of effectiveness should include reducing the intrusiveness of polling, particularly on groups that tend to be subjected to overpolicing.
If science ultimately kills us all due to climate change or nuclear war or global pandemic or alerting hostile aliens to our presence or (other-crazy-thing-of-nonzero-measure) then I claim that science will not have been good for humanity as a whole. The verdict is unknowable. We comically forgot to run a scientific experiment on the matter.
I get your point, but so far science has been a huge net positive:
- electricity (cellphone towers, refrigerators)
- food technology (producing food efficiently)
- medicine (vaccines, hospitals)
- hygiene (sewer system, clean water)
I wonder if any of the scientist or commenters in this thread have ever lived in a bad hood. The hoods require more and better policing, the worst offenders, who kill orders of magnitude more people are criminal gangs. You remove police - you'll get spike in homicides.
I grew up in a bad neighborhood and was the victim of violence on multiple occasions. I have what the academics call "lived experience". It wasn't any kind of weird fluke, it was exactly the kind of violence you would expect from this kind of area: Being attacked by groups of improverished youths, looking to rob and assault people for money and enjoyment.
The things these privileged ACAB protesters believe are absolute nonsense. These kids were not out there assaulting people because the system had let them fall through the cracks. These were individuals who had purposefully eluded ever integrating themselves in the system. The gangs would act in their own self interest to the fullest extent until the police stopped them.
So what is your response when it's coming from someone that did live in a bad neighborhood,like me? I grew up on the south side of Chicago, around the Back of the Yards area which was particularly bad in the 90s. I've been robbed at gun point and had to live avoiding alleys, avoid wearing certain colors of clothing, have had to grow up seeing dried blood on my walks to elementary school, etc. And I still say ACAB and support defunding the police.
In your view, these are people that don't wish to integrate themselves, and in my view, these are people that never had much of a chance to begin with. The public schools I went to were so underfunded, and I am lucky that I took a different path than the one of least resistance. A lot of the people I grew up with that joined gangs were abused as kids, had learning disabilities, grew up with violence, didn't have a proper learning environment, didn't have after-school programs to go to when they wanted to avoid violence and abuse at home, etc. I'd rather take money from police departments and funnel it to actually giving those kids a chance.
In your view, these are people that don't wish to integrate themselves, and in my view, these are people that never had much of a chance to begin with. The public schools I went to were so underfunded, and I am lucky that I took a different path than the one of least resistance. A lot of the people I grew up with that joined gangs were abused as kids, had learning disabilities, grew up with violence, didn't have a proper learning environment, didn't have after-school programs to go to when they wanted to avoid violence and abuse at home, etc. I'd rather take money from police departments and funnel it to actually giving those kids a chance.
I can't account for why you think the way you do.
I had an early life typical of some of these places. My area was not as bad as the one you describe FYI. I made so many mistakes in my own early life that really set me back, some of which could potentially be attributed to the nihilistic attitude of my surroundings. As a result I'm perhaps more sympathetic to the downtrodden people of these areas than you might believe. That being said, my own success in life has made me slightly less sympathetic to these people than I used to be. I underwent a massive attitude change in my early 20s that changed my entire life. I stopped blaming other people for my problems and took responsibility for my life, it was like flicking a switch. All of a sudden everything in my life slowly began to function, I started to receive positive results from my actions. I understand that not everyone can become rich. You'll have greatly different results if instead of becoming a software engineer like I did you're just bagging groceries. That's always going to be the case though.
I truly understand that getting through to kids from broken homes can be difficult when their parents, like mine, have created such a hostile environment for their kids that they base their entire conceptual model of society on their broken home life. Having said that, there's no one out there telling people that getting hooked on hard drugs is a good idea, yet it still happens. These kids know what living a good life looks like. They make their own bad decisions. I really do believe in offering all the support we can to help at-risk children avert ruining their lives. They're not all going to be saved, no matter what you do. I feel like those who are capable, and interested, will always seek out better things for themselves eventually.
I had an early life typical of some of these places. My area was not as bad as the one you describe FYI. I made so many mistakes in my own early life that really set me back, some of which could potentially be attributed to the nihilistic attitude of my surroundings. As a result I'm perhaps more sympathetic to the downtrodden people of these areas than you might believe. That being said, my own success in life has made me slightly less sympathetic to these people than I used to be. I underwent a massive attitude change in my early 20s that changed my entire life. I stopped blaming other people for my problems and took responsibility for my life, it was like flicking a switch. All of a sudden everything in my life slowly began to function, I started to receive positive results from my actions. I understand that not everyone can become rich. You'll have greatly different results if instead of becoming a software engineer like I did you're just bagging groceries. That's always going to be the case though.
I truly understand that getting through to kids from broken homes can be difficult when their parents, like mine, have created such a hostile environment for their kids that they base their entire conceptual model of society on their broken home life. Having said that, there's no one out there telling people that getting hooked on hard drugs is a good idea, yet it still happens. These kids know what living a good life looks like. They make their own bad decisions. I really do believe in offering all the support we can to help at-risk children avert ruining their lives. They're not all going to be saved, no matter what you do. I feel like those who are capable, and interested, will always seek out better things for themselves eventually.
I mean I'm glad you had your light bulb moment but that doesn't always happen, does it? Furthermore, the issue isn't that "they're not all going to be saved, no matter what you do," the issue is that society gives up on them before they even have a choice. E.g. their elementary school has its funding cut, their after-school programs are cut, they family is broken and/or abusive--why are you expecting a child to grow up and learn how to make the right decisions?
And as for making the right decisions--I have a few issues that have worked hand-in-hand to keep me from having a long and stable relationship. I know which bad decisions I've made in the past, I know as I making them that they're bad, yet here I am, single and at 31! It's something I'm still trying to work through. So having said that, I am not going to judge someone for their bad decisions if I can't always pick the right path myself. And I'm sure you're not always sticking to the right path, either. I mean, I'm sure there's a billionaire out that there could go through your life decisions and judge you for not having a fleet of yachts yet. It's easy to be like "don't do meth!" and then not do meth, but I don't know what those people are going through that they thought that meth was a good idea. I don't want them in jail for it, either. I think there are far better options.
And as for making the right decisions--I have a few issues that have worked hand-in-hand to keep me from having a long and stable relationship. I know which bad decisions I've made in the past, I know as I making them that they're bad, yet here I am, single and at 31! It's something I'm still trying to work through. So having said that, I am not going to judge someone for their bad decisions if I can't always pick the right path myself. And I'm sure you're not always sticking to the right path, either. I mean, I'm sure there's a billionaire out that there could go through your life decisions and judge you for not having a fleet of yachts yet. It's easy to be like "don't do meth!" and then not do meth, but I don't know what those people are going through that they thought that meth was a good idea. I don't want them in jail for it, either. I think there are far better options.
I hope you're able to work through the issues you feel that you have and enjoy a happy life. Being single at 31 isn't terribly unusual in 2020, nor is it a terminal condition. There are plenty of other single people out there to work with.
> ...the issue is that society gives up on them before they even have a choice...
I was able to learn useful skills on my own without the education system supporting me. No doubt, high school helped build a useful foundation for learning other useful things. I was teaching myself skills using freely ( or the next best thing ) available tools and resources online. American poverty in 2020 includes access to the internet. This is evident by the interaction of impoverished and low socio-economic status Americans on social media. They're not here debating the systemic causes of poverty on HN, they're consuming mind numbing media on worldstarhiphop. Before I was able to get internet access at home I used the local library, or at my high school. I won't dox myself by talking about my specific professional interests, save to say they were important enough to me that I devoted my own time to researching it. I refuse to believe that there are people in first-world countries who have no access to useful resources like this. YMMV, obviously. I didn't have anyone in my life who encouraged me to do X, I just felt X was cool and I really wanted to understand more. Most of the people I've met in my field are the same. I don't mean to project my own thoughts and experiences on to everyone. I feel that my natural inclinations were to learn, and all of the people I grew up with who were similarly gifted and inclined ended up escaping poverty in one form or another. You could probably count yourself among this cohort.
> ...the issue is that society gives up on them before they even have a choice...
I was able to learn useful skills on my own without the education system supporting me. No doubt, high school helped build a useful foundation for learning other useful things. I was teaching myself skills using freely ( or the next best thing ) available tools and resources online. American poverty in 2020 includes access to the internet. This is evident by the interaction of impoverished and low socio-economic status Americans on social media. They're not here debating the systemic causes of poverty on HN, they're consuming mind numbing media on worldstarhiphop. Before I was able to get internet access at home I used the local library, or at my high school. I won't dox myself by talking about my specific professional interests, save to say they were important enough to me that I devoted my own time to researching it. I refuse to believe that there are people in first-world countries who have no access to useful resources like this. YMMV, obviously. I didn't have anyone in my life who encouraged me to do X, I just felt X was cool and I really wanted to understand more. Most of the people I've met in my field are the same. I don't mean to project my own thoughts and experiences on to everyone. I feel that my natural inclinations were to learn, and all of the people I grew up with who were similarly gifted and inclined ended up escaping poverty in one form or another. You could probably count yourself among this cohort.
is it (a)you don't think more people would be robbed at gunpoint without a police force around, or (b) you don't think it's a big deal to get robbed at gunpoint
It's C I think it's better to try and prevent people from thinking robbing someone at gunpoint is a viable idea.
Relatively few people are opposed to the idea of police. A much larger number of people are opposed to policing in its current form in the USA.
No doubt, and at least anecdotally, that seems to be happening in real time.
As to the larger question, I'm having a very hard time seeing adding knowledge and science as a bad thing. Without those, any proposed improvement to policing (including abuse) is simply flailing guesswork.
As to the larger question, I'm having a very hard time seeing adding knowledge and science as a bad thing. Without those, any proposed improvement to policing (including abuse) is simply flailing guesswork.
Yeah, and keep underfunding preventive measures like improved schooling. Who cares if the youth of the hood keep growing up to be offenders -- we can just arrest/kill them with the police!
Throwing police at the problem is only putting a band-aid on the symptoms, but ignoring the root cause. Violence will only beget more violence in the long run.
Throwing police at the problem is only putting a band-aid on the symptoms, but ignoring the root cause. Violence will only beget more violence in the long run.
Does it occur that the gangs are an attempt from within consistently brutalized communities to mirror their brutalizers
Nothing is anyone's fault, huh. He's not a murderer--he's just brutalized and oppressed.
It has little to do with their brutalizers, it is the nature of physical power and corruption.
Many times throughout history gangs form for self protection in absense of a functioning authority. Regardless they inevitably get involved in a racket of some sort or assert their claim to some sort of territory and become just another band of violent thugs out for themselves and a scourge on their host community.
The remotely closest thing to a gang that hasn't progressed to that probably isn't like that are the Guardian Angels safety patrols.
Being brutalized is neither neccessary nor sufficent, although it may make them more likely. If the "configuration" arises essentially they will go down that path.
Many times throughout history gangs form for self protection in absense of a functioning authority. Regardless they inevitably get involved in a racket of some sort or assert their claim to some sort of territory and become just another band of violent thugs out for themselves and a scourge on their host community.
The remotely closest thing to a gang that hasn't progressed to that probably isn't like that are the Guardian Angels safety patrols.
Being brutalized is neither neccessary nor sufficent, although it may make them more likely. If the "configuration" arises essentially they will go down that path.
It appears that one of the signers is selling a competing/alternate/supplemental product: Cathy O'Neil : https://orcaarisk.com/
From her twitter page ( https://twitter.com/mathbabedotorg/status/127394137538240512... ) : Cathy O'Neil @mathbabedotorg I'm interested in algorithmic accountability, civil disagreement, and the social mechanism of shame. Algorithmic auditor at ORCAA.
From her twitter page ( https://twitter.com/mathbabedotorg/status/127394137538240512... ) : Cathy O'Neil @mathbabedotorg I'm interested in algorithmic accountability, civil disagreement, and the social mechanism of shame. Algorithmic auditor at ORCAA.
This doesn't seem to make sense. By more accurately predicting where crimes will occur, the police departments can reduce the amount of patrols needed.
Except this is not how it works. We are not accurately predicting where crimes will occur, but maximizing the amounts of arrests.
Indeed, sending a police patrol will only catch the kind of crime that happens in socio-economically disadvantaged communities, which in turn contributes to skewing the data to suggest that more crimes there, which leads to more policing, which leads to more crime, and so on.
Meanwhile, wage theft, over twice the size of all other kinds of theft put together, keeps growing year after year.
Police patrols should be entirely reactive, and not proactive. Proactive policing does not work.
Indeed, sending a police patrol will only catch the kind of crime that happens in socio-economically disadvantaged communities, which in turn contributes to skewing the data to suggest that more crimes there, which leads to more policing, which leads to more crime, and so on.
Meanwhile, wage theft, over twice the size of all other kinds of theft put together, keeps growing year after year.
Police patrols should be entirely reactive, and not proactive. Proactive policing does not work.
Police patrols should be entirely proactive otherwise they are responses instead of patrols. The only point of police patrols is to have a moving and visible presence in the community.
There are many cases of reactive police patrols. For example, at a protest, as a response to a people feeling that it could help their community, and so on.
I assure you mathematicians aren't optimizing the "visbile presence in the community". That's not something you need a mathematician for. Mathematicians are optimizing the ability of police to maximize the number of arrests by deciding which areas they should patrol in order to maximize crime.
I assure you mathematicians aren't optimizing the "visbile presence in the community". That's not something you need a mathematician for. Mathematicians are optimizing the ability of police to maximize the number of arrests by deciding which areas they should patrol in order to maximize crime.
> I assure you mathematicians aren't optimizing the "visbile presence in the community".
How, is this your line of work?
How, is this your line of work?
My guess is that it is hard to measure "moving and visual presence in the community" and input it into a machine. Not that it wouldn't be nightmarish to communities that have already been overpoliced if that's what was being maximized. I don't want armed guards exclusively patrolling the streets of poor and minority neighborhoods.
Not at all. You can measure average density of patrols in various areas at various times, the mean and average distance between patrols, the average response times for different patrols to converge onto a response. You can also poll the community on perceptions of local police, visibility, community satisfaction, and so on. To say this sort of thing is too hard to measure really only means you don’t want the data.
This is addressed at the very start of the article. It's about predictive policing.
Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but it doesn't seem to me that you'd need fancy predictive mathematics to get reasonable solutions for community visibility.
Count me as one people would rather the cops just respond when called than cruise around looking for crime. If it's that important someone will call it in. If they want a better response time they can do what EMTs do and forward deploy.
You might be underestimating the prejudice of the people calling things in to the police. Listening to police radio for just a few hours I was astounded at the things people report to the police: 1) A man and young girl walking down a country road... the man happened to be a minority, the girl was white. Police decided to check it out. 2) A man wearing camoflague and carrying a long rifle.. in a country area, during duck hunting season. Police decided to check it out.
When you say "..which leads to more crime" I'm going to presume you mean that it leads to catching a higher percentage of the existing crime, which leads to more police, which leads to catching a higher percentage yet again.... rather than the direct interpretation that police presence causes crime.
Not all crime is equal, and to present crime as purely a dollar value is a bit disingenuous. Wage theft is important, and isn't pursued nearly enough, but it isn't on the same level as violent crime, which happens primarily in disadvantaged communities.
Completely agree on proactive policing. End the drug war and it would cease to be necessary.
Completely agree on proactive policing. End the drug war and it would cease to be necessary.
The 'proactive' is just driving or walking around a neighborhood. It isn't (necessarily) doing things like stop and frisk or just going around accosting random people on the street.
It's not just driving or walking around a neighbourhood, it's doing your best to find the maximum amount of crime. Otherwise, you wouldn't need mathematical models in order to optimize the "efficacity" of the operation.
The vast majority of crime where police should be involved are crimes where the victim can call the police later. For those that don't fit this criteria, either police patrols are already ineffective (targeted assassinations, for example), or the police isn't being called because the victim thinks it will make the situation worse. Which in many cases is true, and I think fixing that problem would be a good step to take.
The vast majority of crime where police should be involved are crimes where the victim can call the police later. For those that don't fit this criteria, either police patrols are already ineffective (targeted assassinations, for example), or the police isn't being called because the victim thinks it will make the situation worse. Which in many cases is true, and I think fixing that problem would be a good step to take.
In the town where I grew up the most common non-traffic emergency calls were calls of injury of which the most serious were cardiac distress. The police used mathematical models to position two SUV patrols at opposite sides of town where each contained some manner electric cardio medical device for rapid response to heart attacks.
Sure, this is also done in my city. Except that isn't the responsibility of police, but that of the EMS service/paramedics/firefighters. If the police are doing that in your town I also think that's problematic, because many people won't call if they know the police are going to come for injuries.
> because many people won't call if they know the police are going to come for injuries.
That is not what occurred in practice and there is no data to suggest this would ever be a probable outcome. At any rate people don’t have a choice on who responds if the call is to 911.
That is not what occurred in practice and there is no data to suggest this would ever be a probable outcome. At any rate people don’t have a choice on who responds if the call is to 911.
> there is no data to suggest this would ever be a probable outcome
The data behind 911 Good Samaritan laws[1] that protect people from being arrested when they call in overdoses would like to have a word with you.
[1] https://www.shatterproof.org/advocacy/state-by-state-informa...
The data behind 911 Good Samaritan laws[1] that protect people from being arrested when they call in overdoses would like to have a word with you.
[1] https://www.shatterproof.org/advocacy/state-by-state-informa...
In my city if there is a 911 call for a medical emergency you will get the firefighters or the ambulance faster, and depending on the emergency might not get police at all.
In any case, if you are giving anyone defibrillators and locating them to minimize response time to cardiac incidents, it would be absurd to give it to the police.
In any case, if you are giving anyone defibrillators and locating them to minimize response time to cardiac incidents, it would be absurd to give it to the police.
I guess I don't really understand what is generally wrong with a police officer looking for a crime being committed in public and then stopping it?
We create what we look for
Are doctors creating cancer and high cholesterol?
Doctors actually fix cancer and high cholesterol, police simply takes the criminals away but does not fix crime. It's an approach to crime about as sophisticated and effective as blood-letting and amputations - works sometimes, makes everything worse when that's all you use.
How do you know that removing criminals away does not reduce crime?
This is false. Socio-economically disadvantaged areas genuinely have more crime than elsewhere. They require more policing as a result. Without more policing, the crime problems get worse not better. Your sort of thinking has been tried out with disastrous results in cities throughout the US. It is actively harming law abiding citizens living in poor communities.
Policing is not causing crime. People committing crime is causing crime.
Policing is not causing crime. People committing crime is causing crime.
I think it's disingenuous to say this in absolute terms. Simply by pointing out that poor people many times can't bail themselves out before a hearing, and suffer all the consequences (like lost job, lost home) that come with that, is proof that the system is at least to a degree stacked against poor people.
Wage theft in the US is the majority of theft. Tell me, are people in socio-economically disadvantaged areas committing more wage-theft?
You have to ask yourself why there is more crime in poor areas. The answer is that we don't go looking for or don't care about the crime that happens in other areas as much, and that the socio-economic conditions lead to more crime. You can't fix these issues by sending police there to act like an occupying army. You can only fix the root cause.
As a personal anecdote, having grown up in such places, people have so many bad experiences with police that they genuinely don't want to call them when their presence might maybe help. So is sending police patrols to maximize the number of arrests and create ever more negative experiences the solution? No. You have to fix the root cause.
You have to ask yourself why there is more crime in poor areas. The answer is that we don't go looking for or don't care about the crime that happens in other areas as much, and that the socio-economic conditions lead to more crime. You can't fix these issues by sending police there to act like an occupying army. You can only fix the root cause.
As a personal anecdote, having grown up in such places, people have so many bad experiences with police that they genuinely don't want to call them when their presence might maybe help. So is sending police patrols to maximize the number of arrests and create ever more negative experiences the solution? No. You have to fix the root cause.
I'm sorry but I don't take your anecdotes seriously. I've seen too many legitimate uses of police force described as "police brutality" recently to take accusations of police brutality at face value. It seems that people have convinced themselves of police brutality through popular narrative and twisted anecdotes.
Removing criminal elements from communities creates safer communities, which is a prerequisite for people thriving.
Removing criminal elements from communities creates safer communities, which is a prerequisite for people thriving.
In his defense, there are some crimes (like smoking weed) that everyone commits, but that only get prosecuted in places the police decide to patrol.
"Without more policing, the crime problems get worse"
Do you have a source?
Do you have a source?
It’s intuitive and true that poor homes and neighborhoods are going to house more crime. Now, is the solution to arrest them and send them to jail for long periods of time? I don’t know. Arguing that the poor aren’t more susceptible to crime is a losing battle though.
> It’s intuitive and true that poor homes and neighborhoods are going to house more crime.
I challenge your assumption. To me it seems intuitive that crimes are committed at higher rates by the socioeconomically advantaged, because they can get away with it.
See for example that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the general population.
https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-immigrants-crime-assessing...
I challenge your assumption. To me it seems intuitive that crimes are committed at higher rates by the socioeconomically advantaged, because they can get away with it.
See for example that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than the general population.
https://www.cato.org/blog/illegal-immigrants-crime-assessing...
> It’s intuitive and true that poor homes and neighborhoods are going to house more crime.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to assume certain truths based upon intuition.
I'm not sure it's a good idea to assume certain truths based upon intuition.
If we look at theft like the OP does, wage theft vastly outnumbers other types of criminal theft.
Not if the patrols they are sending have been taught to see all of the people in those places as targets. Police can literally make things worse. Even the victims of crime often don't want police there.
This has been known in those communities for decades. It's only the most obvious, well-documented brutality that has begun to make other people aware of it. It's the broad reaction to that brutality, where other police and their strongest supporters reflexively excuse the inexcusable, that have made people like these mathematicians realize that sending the police doesn't solve the problems that their models are pinpointing.
If the mathematicians want to help people, they'll model the broader causes of poverty, injustice, and inequality. Then we can try to solve the real problems, rather than "I heard there was a problem, let's send in people with guns until it gets better."
This has been known in those communities for decades. It's only the most obvious, well-documented brutality that has begun to make other people aware of it. It's the broad reaction to that brutality, where other police and their strongest supporters reflexively excuse the inexcusable, that have made people like these mathematicians realize that sending the police doesn't solve the problems that their models are pinpointing.
If the mathematicians want to help people, they'll model the broader causes of poverty, injustice, and inequality. Then we can try to solve the real problems, rather than "I heard there was a problem, let's send in people with guns until it gets better."
The victim's desires for police involvement is usually not very relevant. The victim can not provide any information to the police, but that doesn't mean that the police can't or shouldn't do anything.
Respecting the victim's wishes is basically giving tacic approval of spousal abuse and honor killings.
Respecting the victim's wishes is basically giving tacic approval of spousal abuse and honor killings.
You don't fix spousal abuse nor honour killing by sending police to arrest people in poor neighbourhood. You fix spousal abuse by social interventions and honour killing by targeted response combined with social interventions.
Are you saying that the visible presence of the police won't stop any type of crime, or just specifically your spousal abuse example?
In general physical presence of police helps crime in the short term, but not in the media to long term, instead it likely makes it worse. The spousal abuse example wasn't mine, but the GP's.
You're arguing against a different point than what I was addressing.
The problem is, as someone in the field of AI, I can see how much overhyped low-quality products are sold to stakeholders believing they are getting a human-like or godlike artificially intelligent thing, when it's just a bunch of linear regressions or multilayer perceptrons operating on unsanitized data without proper evaluations or misleading numbers in the marketing, careless ways of separating training and test data etc.
I think what the article says is likely to be true. It's a scientific cover-your-ass label for the high-ups to be able to do whatever they want and justify it. Similar to how CEOs bring in external consultants and pay them fat money so the CEOs can now do whatever they wanted originally, but now with Big Consulting Firm's stamp of approval. You can make these "AI" models skew to the direction you want. Just as it is with statistics and p-hacking, only that the machine learning community is even less versed in confidence values and is just generally less mature in terms of best practices as it's a newer field.
And absolutely researchers should pay attention to who they work for and where the money comes from. Fundamental research is one thing, working on general AI is useful for all human endeavors just like working on energy efficiency or better cars. It's a necessary part of life that bad actors have benefits from a tide raising all ships.
But it's not the same when directly working on a project for a bad actor. Similar to how Google engineers stood up against military projects or serving the Chinese censoring machine, it is important for mathematicians and computer scientists to consider whether they are building something unethical. These are professionals, intellectuals who have more responsibility than lower paid workers. We cannot blame the cleaning personnel or the cooks at the police canteen in the same way.
It is part of one's civic duty as an intellectual to reflect upon one's societal role and impact.
Again, this is not about fundamental research, that might be used for evil purposes. It's about directly working for corrupt organizations. Whether the police in general (or which specific levels or branches) is corrupt enough to refuse working for them and how much worse they are compared to big corporations is hard for me to judge from Europe. But it's certainly something that people working for them should reflect on and make a moral choice because they are the ones who see what they actually work on. There are many places for mathematicians and computer scientists to work at and so they have the luxury to follow their conscience. And all this also applies to intelligence agencies, like the NSA and others as well.
I think what the article says is likely to be true. It's a scientific cover-your-ass label for the high-ups to be able to do whatever they want and justify it. Similar to how CEOs bring in external consultants and pay them fat money so the CEOs can now do whatever they wanted originally, but now with Big Consulting Firm's stamp of approval. You can make these "AI" models skew to the direction you want. Just as it is with statistics and p-hacking, only that the machine learning community is even less versed in confidence values and is just generally less mature in terms of best practices as it's a newer field.
And absolutely researchers should pay attention to who they work for and where the money comes from. Fundamental research is one thing, working on general AI is useful for all human endeavors just like working on energy efficiency or better cars. It's a necessary part of life that bad actors have benefits from a tide raising all ships.
But it's not the same when directly working on a project for a bad actor. Similar to how Google engineers stood up against military projects or serving the Chinese censoring machine, it is important for mathematicians and computer scientists to consider whether they are building something unethical. These are professionals, intellectuals who have more responsibility than lower paid workers. We cannot blame the cleaning personnel or the cooks at the police canteen in the same way.
It is part of one's civic duty as an intellectual to reflect upon one's societal role and impact.
Again, this is not about fundamental research, that might be used for evil purposes. It's about directly working for corrupt organizations. Whether the police in general (or which specific levels or branches) is corrupt enough to refuse working for them and how much worse they are compared to big corporations is hard for me to judge from Europe. But it's certainly something that people working for them should reflect on and make a moral choice because they are the ones who see what they actually work on. There are many places for mathematicians and computer scientists to work at and so they have the luxury to follow their conscience. And all this also applies to intelligence agencies, like the NSA and others as well.
Nothing that these people are doing makes sense or demonstrates any capacity for forethought.
It demonstrates an extreme and irrational fear of thoughtcrime, though.
There are very good reasons why proactive policing leads to bad outcomes. You could read up on that before.
Predicting where you will need to send patrols is proactive policing.
Predicting where you will need to send patrols is proactive policing.
There is a contradiction in expecting an organization that enhances its capabilities to use its capabilities less.
Not that predicting where crimes will occur is really a thing - more likely you are just predicting where a population is getting policed.
Not that predicting where crimes will occur is really a thing - more likely you are just predicting where a population is getting policed.
It holds on the assumption of preventative power from those capabilities. Communicable diseases are a good example of a context - if everyone was treated for say tuberculosis with increased capacity then the number of cases would stay down vs just 'stabilizing" the numbers. See nuclear weaponry for an example of declining use.
Deterrence and deescalation are where predictive policing could theoretically be useful but in practice it is often just bias laundering or reinforcing their tautologies. Looking at the "wrong side of the tracks" more and the arrest rates will climb there even if crime is actually lower there - let alone confounding variables. Like say the police being called in domestic disputes by witnesses in thin walled apartments and trailer parks but not in large fenced estates even if they are just as loud and violent because they weren't literally heard.
Deterrence and deescalation are where predictive policing could theoretically be useful but in practice it is often just bias laundering or reinforcing their tautologies. Looking at the "wrong side of the tracks" more and the arrest rates will climb there even if crime is actually lower there - let alone confounding variables. Like say the police being called in domestic disputes by witnesses in thin walled apartments and trailer parks but not in large fenced estates even if they are just as loud and violent because they weren't literally heard.
If your response to a set of data showing areas where arrests have occurred in the past is to police those areas more, there is no doubt that in the future there will be more arrests in those same areas.
Exactly. Biases in previous data will be amplified with predictive policing algorithms. See, for example, https://rss.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1740-...
I would agree with that, if we lived in the futuristic utopian society of Star Trek:TNG. But our world appears to be closer to a cyberpunk dystopia, where you can't trust the powers-that-be to use that kind of technology for good, peaceful, and just ends. Instead, they'll use it to advance their own greed and hate fueled agendas, and to perpetuate existing structural biases.
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But if we put the wrong numbers in, we won't get the right numbers out.
This sort of prediction depends on the data being good. That's not a given. Even the crime statistics are problematic. There is an issue with certain groups getting treated differently in arrests and convictions.
So you could have an area that doesn't have much crime reported because when crime happens it's not reported as crime. Whereas you can have other areas that have a lot more crime reported because there is less leniency given to the population.
This sort of prediction depends on the data being good. That's not a given. Even the crime statistics are problematic. There is an issue with certain groups getting treated differently in arrests and convictions.
So you could have an area that doesn't have much crime reported because when crime happens it's not reported as crime. Whereas you can have other areas that have a lot more crime reported because there is less leniency given to the population.
People in high crime neighborhoods rightly regard the police as the enemy, because the police treat them as the enemy. Giving the enemy better intel is never desirable.
But somehow, their budget always increases...
I urge you to read Minority Report, or watch the movie.
> I urge you to read Minority Report, or watch the movie.
This is fiction.
This is fiction.
Fiction is a really powerful tool that can be used to warn us of societal dangers while sparing us actually needing to live through them.
It is fiction, so it isn't a history book and there are plenty of assumptions on how things will work. However, in good fiction, those assumptions are plausible and highlight a future that may happen.
Dismissing fiction is just like having a stock manager that dismisses quarterly reports since they don't definitively tell you how the company will be doing - they just tell you how it has been doing. Prediction and imagination are not flawless tools, but they are helpful to plan for the future. (Which is amusing to say in the light of the book being discussed)
It is fiction, so it isn't a history book and there are plenty of assumptions on how things will work. However, in good fiction, those assumptions are plausible and highlight a future that may happen.
Dismissing fiction is just like having a stock manager that dismisses quarterly reports since they don't definitively tell you how the company will be doing - they just tell you how it has been doing. Prediction and imagination are not flawless tools, but they are helpful to plan for the future. (Which is amusing to say in the light of the book being discussed)
Many science fiction writers would tell you, and have publicly stated in the past, that they don't predict the future and that's not their job.
Just by chance, you can go back and find stories from the past that seem prophetic now, but not going forward.
Just by chance, you can go back and find stories from the past that seem prophetic now, but not going forward.
I don't think any sci-fi writers (that aren't dishonest) would claim their work is prophetic, but good sci-fi is taking how things are and changing just one thing and trying to describe how that might look as accurately as you can imagine.
The details are total BS, but sci-fi is absolutely a good vector for allegories and societal insights.
The details are total BS, but sci-fi is absolutely a good vector for allegories and societal insights.
It's literally just made up in someone's head. It's a hypothesis without an experiment. You can hypothesise anything and everything.
If I similarly just made up a book where police surveillance was the best thing in the world would you cite that as an argument in favour?
How can you use a made up story to argue something when someone else could make up another story that disproves your point and proves theirs?
If I similarly just made up a book where police surveillance was the best thing in the world would you cite that as an argument in favour?
How can you use a made up story to argue something when someone else could make up another story that disproves your point and proves theirs?
All theory is made up until we have a practical example to compare against.
Using the logic you've already employed, one could conclude that the entire anthology of philosophical texts also have zero bearing on reality because "they're all made up".
Using the logic you've already employed, one could conclude that the entire anthology of philosophical texts also have zero bearing on reality because "they're all made up".
What do you think about my point that anyone could write a fiction book saying absolutely anything, and argue against you using that as their source. The two of you could go back and forth forever, both making up stories to fit your argument. What on earth is the point?
Just to return to this - a lot of fields folks on this site deal with do have explicitly correct outcomes, it may be hard to find the right answer but once you have a possible answer it is much cheaper to prove it is the right answer.
Societal and philosophical questions don't work like that, ethics are driven by society and the view of society changes over time with actions like, as an example, eating beef on Fridays being incredibly taboo among christian societies a few hundred years ago (and to this day in some areas) to the point where taking an action like that in public would likely call into question your ability to act ethically.
Ethics is a highly subjective field - if you try and revive geocentric solar system models with a paper that essentially amounts to "I said so" you'll be dismissed since there are theories with more evidence out there. The process of allegorization though is a more subjective and iterative process where two people can honestly state very different theories and have wide support from large groups - including potentially having mutual supporters.
The allegory that comes from Sci-fi isn't a statement of fact, it's an opinion on danger and while objective evidence is always preferred it doesn't mean that subjective evidence is meaningless. The process of going back and forth forever is quite valuable, if it isn't being done with "No, you're stupids" then each participant will be further developing their theory to account for weaknesses or vagaries exposed by the other participant and that process produces a better understanding in both parties and more refined theories to be presented to spectators.
The question of whether it's morally correct to commit murder is still open - there are some really compelling arguments in favor of not murdering people and some of those even arise purely out of self-interest[1] but if I say "Bob murdered Jim" there are all sorts of qualifiers and conditions that can take that from being pretty ethically repugnant (say infanticide) to being generally seen as justified (maybe, ongoing debate yo) at least in the US (say a genuinely necessary and unavoidable act of self-defense).
The problems fantasy is really good at digging into are ethical ones and, physics based fantasy books are super boring. If your sci-fi book was about how the earth would be different if G was actually 1.367×10−10 m3⋅kg−1⋅s−2 you would essentially have a book about how some mechanics of movement are affects and why planes are so expensive to fly - you could build an interesting plot, but the allegorical value would be essentially nil... well that's what I think, lesse is some sci-fi writer comes along and writes a super impactful and interesting novel about an earth that is essentially the same as ours but with slightly less than two times as much gravity.
1. Which tends to be the strongest moral guidance IMO, but I'm jaded :shrug:
Societal and philosophical questions don't work like that, ethics are driven by society and the view of society changes over time with actions like, as an example, eating beef on Fridays being incredibly taboo among christian societies a few hundred years ago (and to this day in some areas) to the point where taking an action like that in public would likely call into question your ability to act ethically.
Ethics is a highly subjective field - if you try and revive geocentric solar system models with a paper that essentially amounts to "I said so" you'll be dismissed since there are theories with more evidence out there. The process of allegorization though is a more subjective and iterative process where two people can honestly state very different theories and have wide support from large groups - including potentially having mutual supporters.
The allegory that comes from Sci-fi isn't a statement of fact, it's an opinion on danger and while objective evidence is always preferred it doesn't mean that subjective evidence is meaningless. The process of going back and forth forever is quite valuable, if it isn't being done with "No, you're stupids" then each participant will be further developing their theory to account for weaknesses or vagaries exposed by the other participant and that process produces a better understanding in both parties and more refined theories to be presented to spectators.
The question of whether it's morally correct to commit murder is still open - there are some really compelling arguments in favor of not murdering people and some of those even arise purely out of self-interest[1] but if I say "Bob murdered Jim" there are all sorts of qualifiers and conditions that can take that from being pretty ethically repugnant (say infanticide) to being generally seen as justified (maybe, ongoing debate yo) at least in the US (say a genuinely necessary and unavoidable act of self-defense).
The problems fantasy is really good at digging into are ethical ones and, physics based fantasy books are super boring. If your sci-fi book was about how the earth would be different if G was actually 1.367×10−10 m3⋅kg−1⋅s−2 you would essentially have a book about how some mechanics of movement are affects and why planes are so expensive to fly - you could build an interesting plot, but the allegorical value would be essentially nil... well that's what I think, lesse is some sci-fi writer comes along and writes a super impactful and interesting novel about an earth that is essentially the same as ours but with slightly less than two times as much gravity.
1. Which tends to be the strongest moral guidance IMO, but I'm jaded :shrug:
FAST, the Future Attribute Screening Technology, was a federal precrime research effort from the Department of Homeland Security which sought to pick criminals out at public locations based on biometrics. [0] FAST was tested in secret on the USA population in an unknown location. [1]
PredPol is a precrime system written by a mathematician (an assistant professor of math and CS) which recommends where police officers ought to patrol. [2] PredPol was deployed in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, CA.
This is not fiction.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100603031047/http://www.dhs.go...
[1] https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110527/full/news.2011.323.h...
[2] http://math.scu.edu/~gmohler/predpol.html
PredPol is a precrime system written by a mathematician (an assistant professor of math and CS) which recommends where police officers ought to patrol. [2] PredPol was deployed in Santa Cruz and Los Angeles, CA.
This is not fiction.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100603031047/http://www.dhs.go...
[1] https://www.nature.com/news/2011/110527/full/news.2011.323.h...
[2] http://math.scu.edu/~gmohler/predpol.html
> This is not fiction.
No the book and movie are fiction, I mean. You can't learn anything from them. They're made up. Inside someone's head. There's zero data points in them.
I'm sure you can learn something from studying the history of the two projects you mentioned!
But not from a story someone made up and that some people acted out on a film set. That's not data. Don't base you philosophy on something that didn't actually happen.
No the book and movie are fiction, I mean. You can't learn anything from them. They're made up. Inside someone's head. There's zero data points in them.
I'm sure you can learn something from studying the history of the two projects you mentioned!
But not from a story someone made up and that some people acted out on a film set. That's not data. Don't base you philosophy on something that didn't actually happen.
On that note, I encourage everyone to read more PKD in general. You can't go (too) wrong reading any of his stuff. Valis is pretty f'in weird, but still harmless. I think.
I urge you to try to learn something from the material you praise, to the point that you can articulate the insights in your own words.
Oh, pretentious snark is fun. I can do it too.
You have made the erroneous assumption that I cannot articulate the insights, and further the erroneous conflation between "cannot" and "will not".
You have made the erroneous assumption that I cannot articulate the insights, and further the erroneous conflation between "cannot" and "will not".
Excuse me. That was not snark, but a 100% serious comment that comes from a core part of my worldview.
If you're actually trying to contribute to the discussion, it follows that you would try to convey the insights you've learned from Minority Report in a way that can help others to appreciate what you think is important.
You're right -- it could very well be that you have some deep insight you gained from Minority Report, but simply refuse to say it, even as you post on this forum, and even as you demand others take the time to watch it based on nothing but that demand. I was aware of this possibility, but ignored it, because that would speak very poorly of you, to take the time to post and yet share nothing of what you learned.
What's more likely is that you have nothing to share, because you simply had the feeling of insight, but without any of the substance that would allow you to share what you've learned. The fact that you so steadfastly refuse to share means you probably never gained the insight to begin with. That's why I made the comment: to distinguish between false and real insight, you need to do a check about whether you can actually share with others what you learned without them having to set aside the three hours that you did.
That's not snark, it's good epistemic hygiene and respect for others' time in a discussion. I do hope you take the advice seriously next time.
If you're actually trying to contribute to the discussion, it follows that you would try to convey the insights you've learned from Minority Report in a way that can help others to appreciate what you think is important.
You're right -- it could very well be that you have some deep insight you gained from Minority Report, but simply refuse to say it, even as you post on this forum, and even as you demand others take the time to watch it based on nothing but that demand. I was aware of this possibility, but ignored it, because that would speak very poorly of you, to take the time to post and yet share nothing of what you learned.
What's more likely is that you have nothing to share, because you simply had the feeling of insight, but without any of the substance that would allow you to share what you've learned. The fact that you so steadfastly refuse to share means you probably never gained the insight to begin with. That's why I made the comment: to distinguish between false and real insight, you need to do a check about whether you can actually share with others what you learned without them having to set aside the three hours that you did.
That's not snark, it's good epistemic hygiene and respect for others' time in a discussion. I do hope you take the advice seriously next time.
The book ("The Minority Report") and the movie have radically different messages.
That's like telling someone planning on getting their driver's license to watch The Fast and the Furious as if it has any relation to actual driving anyone encounters.
If they inaccurately predict where crime will occur, their recommendations could cause an elevated number of patrols in some neighborhoods.
> widely documented disparities in how US law-enforcement agencies treat people of different races and ethnicities
Citation needed, particularly for Nature. As far as I can tell the supposed disparities are explained by the amount of violent crime the race and ethnicity commits (leading to more police interactions), but it's impolite to bring that up.
Citation needed, particularly for Nature. As far as I can tell the supposed disparities are explained by the amount of violent crime the race and ethnicity commits (leading to more police interactions), but it's impolite to bring that up.
It's impolite to bring that up because OF COURSE there are more violent crimes committed by a group that has been systematically discriminated against for hundreds of years. What did you expect? So, what should we take away from that? Well, we should expect everyone to receive the same treatment from government organizations (and many non-government organizations) that deliver services to people, without bias. Just because black people may commit more violent crimes as an adjusted ratio among black people compared to other ethnicities, is not a reason to treat a specific individual who happens to be black any differently from an individual who happens to not be black. The complaint of "black lives matter" is that there is a pattern of police abuse towards non-violent black people. So while you may be right in saying that there are more police interactions with black people than with other ethnicities, you are not right in saying that justifies the disparity in how peaceful individuals are profiled and abused. In fact, your reasoning perpetuates that injustice.
> The complaint of "black lives matter" is that there is a pattern of police abuse towards non-violent black people.
Again I have yet to see any convincing data that supports this. There's a marketed list of names of victims, some with video footage, but I can also show you names and video footage of non-violent victims of other races being killed by police.
I certainly support police reform (within the bounds of common sense), and continuing to try to lift black folks up, who I agree have been systematically discriminated against for hundreds of years. But doing it under false pretenses has already opened up a Pandora's Box of racist moral panic when it's simply not there.
Again I have yet to see any convincing data that supports this. There's a marketed list of names of victims, some with video footage, but I can also show you names and video footage of non-violent victims of other races being killed by police.
I certainly support police reform (within the bounds of common sense), and continuing to try to lift black folks up, who I agree have been systematically discriminated against for hundreds of years. But doing it under false pretenses has already opened up a Pandora's Box of racist moral panic when it's simply not there.
Hmm. Ok, there's a march on Washington being organized by Al Sharpton for families of people that have been killed while in police custody. Such a march is possible because there are so many. What do you think the ethnic makeup of that group will be?
What pretense are you saying is false, exactly? That there is a pattern of police abuse towards non-violent black people? It's patently silly. Black people have "the talk". White people don't have "the talk". We have videos of obvious injustice and racism popping up all the time, and the one-two punch of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd being killed by people who are obviously, deeply, racist and nothing being done about it (indicating a severely dysfunctional police organization) catalyzed the "moral panic", but there's no such epidemic of videos showing white people being abused. Why? Because there is no such epidemic, and it is racist.
What pretense are you saying is false, exactly? That there is a pattern of police abuse towards non-violent black people? It's patently silly. Black people have "the talk". White people don't have "the talk". We have videos of obvious injustice and racism popping up all the time, and the one-two punch of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd being killed by people who are obviously, deeply, racist and nothing being done about it (indicating a severely dysfunctional police organization) catalyzed the "moral panic", but there's no such epidemic of videos showing white people being abused. Why? Because there is no such epidemic, and it is racist.
Would you also like a citation for the statement "racism exists"? There are some truths that are so plainly obvious and supported by mountains of data that it's absurd to demand a citation for them.
If someone made the claim that X people are the genetically less intelligent than Y people, I could point to a dozen times and places in history where that would be considered “plainly obvious,” amongst them America itself a mere century ago. The only reason it’s not today is because we have data to the contrary.
Part of maintaining these systems of white supremacy involves firstly disbelieving that such paradigms exist, and then secondly putting the labor of "proof" on the marginalized communities and their allies.
Part of maintaining the lie of "white supremacy" is never being very concrete, just ejecting dissenters with this weird homework assignment, or if pressed, handwave everything away with vague allusions to the unfalsifiable "systemic racism."
If the rare skeptic persists at this point you can now label them a "white supremacist," having conveniently shifted the goalposts on that term so that they are now an irredeemable racist, and proceed to burn their existence to the ground and salt the earth.
If the rare skeptic persists at this point you can now label them a "white supremacist," having conveniently shifted the goalposts on that term so that they are now an irredeemable racist, and proceed to burn their existence to the ground and salt the earth.
"Widely documented" means that it's trivial for you to look up the data yourself.
I obviously have, primarily the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR), the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), and the Washington Post's police shootings database. If you compare the police-citizen homicide rate of the latter to the violent crime rate by race/ethnicity of the former, it's quite proportional.
If you're basing your opinion off of highly publicized gruesome videos, I can show you less publicized videos of other races being killed by police too.
If you're basing your opinion off of highly publicized gruesome videos, I can show you less publicized videos of other races being killed by police too.
This sounds like _exactly_ the opposite of what needs to be done in fact.
I do support ethical decision making, academics should be conscious of first and second order consequences.
I do support ethical decision making, academics should be conscious of first and second order consequences.
I don’t understand this. Usually the answer to bad algorithms is to produce better ones, through research.
What is the alternative? To give up and stay out? Ethical considerations are great. Define fairness and set a valid goal for the algorithm that takes fairness into account.
Do the signatories presume a non-quant approach would be less biased towards this supposed “systemic racism”?
What is the alternative? To give up and stay out? Ethical considerations are great. Define fairness and set a valid goal for the algorithm that takes fairness into account.
Do the signatories presume a non-quant approach would be less biased towards this supposed “systemic racism”?
You'd think mathematicians of all people would be able to look at the numbers of 'killings' and see through the propaganda.
The deeper question: should heuristic methods be used at all by police?
I mean not only artificial heuristics like machine learning, but the ones people have always used, e.g.: "acting really weird means the person is probably on drugs/commiting a crime".
All prejudices we use are heuristic techniques. Some are badly calibrated and give bad results (e.g. racism) but some may give accurate results (e.g. "poor neighborhoods have a higher crime rate"). Should these techniques be used when they're accurate?
I mean not only artificial heuristics like machine learning, but the ones people have always used, e.g.: "acting really weird means the person is probably on drugs/commiting a crime".
All prejudices we use are heuristic techniques. Some are badly calibrated and give bad results (e.g. racism) but some may give accurate results (e.g. "poor neighborhoods have a higher crime rate"). Should these techniques be used when they're accurate?
Cops shouldn’t be put in a spot to make decisions. Otherwise societal biases seep into those decisions. Our policing systems should be resilient against biases in the individuals policing.
i think that it shouldn't be boycotted, instead all such work should be done in public. And not just through the crutches of FOIA. It should be in the open to start with. There should be no NDA (except naturally for whatever PII is protected by law). Police should publish all the data. Any contracts on working with that data, any resulting models and their application should be in the open.
I've always wondered if there's a probabilistic argument to show just how biased of policing there is by quantitating somehow the arrests made on a given subpopulation and somehow show how improbable it would be to randomly achieve a given arrest disparity to another subpopulation under the presumption of equal offending by those subpopulations. Is there any math to explore such a thing, sort of like flipping a quarter and hitting heads 5x in a row, that sort of thing.
To use a less charged example say I have three populations of fish, and all swallow coins in the same proportion as each other. In this universe sharks make up 10% of the fish population, sea-bass 30% and rockfish 60%. Exactly 5% of each fish type has a coin in their belly at any given time.
So if we have a world of 1000 fish, then we're talking 100 sharks, 300 sea-bass, and 600 rockfish. Of those 5 sharks, 15 sea-bass, and 30 rockfish have coins in their belly. To measure anything other than those counts of 5% per subpopulation, is there a way to measure how improbable that would be with random selection and subsampling and what not? Does this question even make sense and is well defined enough? My stats strengths aren't the keenest.
To use a less charged example say I have three populations of fish, and all swallow coins in the same proportion as each other. In this universe sharks make up 10% of the fish population, sea-bass 30% and rockfish 60%. Exactly 5% of each fish type has a coin in their belly at any given time.
So if we have a world of 1000 fish, then we're talking 100 sharks, 300 sea-bass, and 600 rockfish. Of those 5 sharks, 15 sea-bass, and 30 rockfish have coins in their belly. To measure anything other than those counts of 5% per subpopulation, is there a way to measure how improbable that would be with random selection and subsampling and what not? Does this question even make sense and is well defined enough? My stats strengths aren't the keenest.
So-called Black Lives Matter costs black lives by making policing less effective. The "Ferguson Effect" has been documented. Recent headline: "104 shot, 14 fatally, over Father’s Day weekend in Chicago" https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2020/6/20/21297470/chicag... .
Roland G Fryer's recent work shows that for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly wrongly, 179 extra people die due to the severe reduction in policing (up to 90%!) over the next two years. Roland G Fryer is a black economics professor at Harvard. His papers are working papers for the National Bureau of Economic Research, and as such not peer reviewed. When he discovered in 2016 that (if you do the math properly) police are actually more likely to shoot a white person in a life-or-death situation, he said it was "the most suprising result of my career."
I found that work fascinating, and I’ve linked to it here before. Your summary of the finding is misleading.
>for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly
This is false. Fryer saw the effect when investigations were in response to social media outrage. In fact, he called out that the effect is not seen when investigation are started in response to complaints through the regular channels.
>for every investigation over a white cop shooting a black person allegedly
This is false. Fryer saw the effect when investigations were in response to social media outrage. In fact, he called out that the effect is not seen when investigation are started in response to complaints through the regular channels.
I stand corrected.
You missed a step.
Police brutality and systemic racism caused a group to rise up and demand justice. The populace took notice, a movement was formed (BLM) and overall trust in law enforcement was lowered. Crime rose as a result.
It's not "so called" Black Lives Matter, it's "so called" equal and just law enforcement that caused the The "Ferguson Effect"
Police brutality and systemic racism caused a group to rise up and demand justice. The populace took notice, a movement was formed (BLM) and overall trust in law enforcement was lowered. Crime rose as a result.
It's not "so called" Black Lives Matter, it's "so called" equal and just law enforcement that caused the The "Ferguson Effect"
What do you mean by "making policing less effective"?
He means policing that results in increased homicide rates and reduced homicide clearance rates.
Don't you want to solve crimes and put murderers in jail? And scare others away from delinquency?
Don't you want to solve crimes and put murderers in jail? And scare others away from delinquency?
Yeah, and arrest and imprison some black folks who smoke pot making it look on paper that the crime is reduced big time.
I am all for reducing crime and making the country safer for everyone. I don't think policing it more is the answer though. Going to the root of the problem is a whole lot more effective in the long term. Some reforms are clearly needed.
Ha! Police in the U.S. are hilariously bad at solving crimes. Even murders are solved at less than a 50% rate in many cities.
I don't find that hilarious. Anyway, if you have a “no snitch culture” you can't expect the police to have an easy time at finding the perpetrator.
Less than 50%???? Ha! Try closer to 10% in Chicago. Yes I want murders solved and think there should be someone doing that job. However, the police aren't doing that so why help them with whatever it is that they are doing.
A large issue is that people refuse to help them. How do you solve a crime if no there are witnesses willing to talk...
How do you get witnesses to talk when they don't trust the police to protect them and serve the community's interests?
That's the problem in Chicago. CPD has destroyed whatever trust the community had in them.
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Everyone agrees that the police should be held to a high standard, but I'm getting tired of people preaching this thinly-veiled anti-police bigotry.
Really, nature.com?
Is noplace safe from politics?
Is noplace safe from politics?
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A lot of comments here are missing the point of boycotting, it's an expression of power with the concrete goal, it's not individual decisions of whether the mathematicians feel the work is "ethical".
Yes, having more liberals working in policing is probably more inline with the goals of those liberals than not, but that's not the point of a boycott.
If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians because of a large enough boycott then it gets them to the table and forces them to reform.
I'm not arguing whether or not this will work, or making a value judgement, I just see a lot of comments which don't seem to understand this point.
Yes, having more liberals working in policing is probably more inline with the goals of those liberals than not, but that's not the point of a boycott.
If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians because of a large enough boycott then it gets them to the table and forces them to reform.
I'm not arguing whether or not this will work, or making a value judgement, I just see a lot of comments which don't seem to understand this point.
>If the police can't get the help they need from mathematicians because of a large enough boycott then it gets them to the table and forces them to reform.
They will just hire someone else. Google was making AIs for the chinese government that almost certainly have deep ethical issues and it was barely a thing. Now helping the police is a boycott issue?
The question is not "do the police want a seat at the table", its if you want the people working with police to be only people who disagree with you and reject your position?
They will just hire someone else. Google was making AIs for the chinese government that almost certainly have deep ethical issues and it was barely a thing. Now helping the police is a boycott issue?
The question is not "do the police want a seat at the table", its if you want the people working with police to be only people who disagree with you and reject your position?
If they can't get help from mathematicians, they'll try to do their own analysis with Excel spreadsheets or just use their gut instincts.
And if they can get by with Excel just as good, then they didn't need mathematicians in the first place.
If not, this will make someone unhappy. And this is the whole point of boycott.
The police is making mathematicians unhappy. Bad cop, no donut in any dimension.
If not, this will make someone unhappy. And this is the whole point of boycott.
The police is making mathematicians unhappy. Bad cop, no donut in any dimension.
It probably won't be as good, and the people they make unhappy will be the general populace, who will experience more crime and worse policing.
Good, and their word can be treated exactly like we treat the word of any other agency full of non-experts that roll their own analyses with excel. No need to lend them the legitimacy of established mathematicians and other academics.
And identity politics breached into the final bastions of logic completing the spread of corruption and signalling the completion of the ritual to summon the lord of chaos.
For everything else, there are parallel infrastructures for the haves - private education, private healthcare, privatized transit, etc. It's something I've thought about a lot in the last few weeks.
On top of that, there is some research that suggests communities rate smaller police forces better than larger ones [1].
> To test this, Ostrom worked with the Indianapolis government and her students to measure the quality of policing. Surprisingly, against common assumptions, they found that the smaller the police force, the more positively residents evaluated the police services they got.
> "Increasing the size of [the police force] consistently had a negative impact on the level of output generated as well as on efficiency of service provision… smaller police departments … consistently outperformed their better trained and better financed larger neighbors.”
> But why did this happen? To explain this, Elinor Ostrom argued that in small communities with small police forces, citizens are more active in community safety. Officers in smaller police forces also have more knowledge of the local area & more trust from people.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast
[1] https://twitter.com/a_vansi/status/1270406823158468614