zlacker

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.

>>alexil+(OP)
> 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.

>>lazyjo+k2
Arrest data includes both.

>>lazyjo+k2
Minorities are less comfortable calling the police in the first place.

>>BGthaO+C6
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.

>>lazyjo+v7
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

>>lazyjo+v7
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.

>>BGthaO+Ga
> 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.

>>lazyjo+k2
What about racist victims?

>>alexil+(OP)
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.

>>lazyjo+ec
It doesn't look great when you are presented with evidence then try to find some reason to disbelieve it.

>>noober+ct
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.

>>roenxi+Fo
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).

>>lazyjo+ec
An illegal British person is going to face far less scrutiny than an Indian migrant from Central America.