Crime prediction software in use in Florida

[thewayne]

"...the Florida State Department of Juvenile Justice will use analysis software to predict crime by young delinquents, putting potential offenders under specific prevention and education programs. Goodbye, human rights!

They will use this software on juvenile delinquents, using a series of variables to determine the potential for these people to commit another crime. Depending on this probability, they will put them under specific re-education programs. Deepak Advani—vice president of predictive analytics at IBM—says the system gives "reliable projections" so governments can take "action in real time" to "prevent criminal activities?"

So VERY not good. You can't get 100% reliable projections. You can't get zero false positives and zero false negatives. You can only get that kind of accuracy with hindsight, and even then you probably won't get zero false positives and negatives.

I really like the Slashdot headline: Innocent Until Predicted Guilty.

http://gizmodo.com/5517231/crime-prediction-software-is-here-and-its-a-very-bad-idea

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/16/1224234/Innocent-Until-Predicted-Guilty

Comments

[apostate-96.livejournal.com]

"Precrime," anyone?

Yikes!

[silveradept]

Yep. Yet another way we can be sure to put away all the black/brown/funny-looking people because they might be criminals and dismiss white people being criminals as anomalies.