Phila. getting software to predict who might kill

[madmusic]

By Michael Matza
Inquirer Staff Writer

University of Pennsylvania criminologist Richard Berk, a trained statistician, never met a data set he didn't like.

Now, using fresh data from the Philadelphia probation department, Berk and three colleagues have built an innovative model for predicting which troublemakers already in the system are most likely to kill or attempt a killing.

With the homicide rate in Philadelphia outpacing last year's by at least 7 percent, a computer model for "forecasting murder" is in the works, Berk said, to be delivered to the probation department in the new year, with clinical trials of the new tool to begin in the spring.

Initial research suggests the software-based system can make it 40 times more likely for caseworkers to accurately predict future lethality than they can using current practices.

snip

"You can imagine the indicators that might incline someone toward violence: youth; having committed a serious crime at an early age; being a man rather than a woman, and so on. Each, by itself, probably isn't going to make a person pull the trigger. But put them all together and you've got a perfect storm of forces for violence," Berk said.

fascinating: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16104571.htm

Edit title and hat tip: http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Ok this is getting ridiculous

shadows of minority report.

As a science fiction writer I PROTEST this many sci fi devises becoming fact

Sheehs, what is a writer to do?

(I know, I know dream new shit up, but you get my drift folks)

[madmusic]

2. This is only the beginning...

In 20 years, 50 years, 100 years? Live will be unrecognizable like it would be to our Founders today.

[Journeyman]

6. But consider how tough its been for satirists since the Reagan Era. . .

and be thankful you don't have to stay two steps ahead of BushCo-type whackjobs.

[Richard Steele]

3. The "butterfly effect" called and left a message: "Good luck with that." nm

[neuvocat]

4. So all of humanity will be on this thing, eh?

After all, anyone can kill.

[Mind_your_head]

5. Someday "soon"???? People will learn that "THE EXPERTS"

(we've been trained to believe/listen to them)......


Get ready for it.....







Are basically "US"......they don't KNOW for certain ANYTHING....

yet we "put our stock" in these so-called EXPERTS as if they are GODS! (and they are anything but!)

Peace,
M_Y_H

[readmoreoften]

7. Don't want to be cliche but M-n-r-t-y R-p-r-t.

If I add the vowels the robots will know what I'm thinking. Great. Yay technology. :eyes: Now how about addressing some of the causes of murderous rage: poverty and inequality being big ones.

[undergroundpanther]

8. I was thinking the same thing

Great movie , prophetic,even...


wish they left the awful puke scene out tho. Ugh.Caught me by suprise. Wish they didn't do that in moves so much.

[TahitiNut]

9. Well, let's just put 'em to death pre-emptively, then! If it's good enough for ...

... 700,000 people in Iraq, it's good enough for Amurikans!! Corporafascism rulez!

:puke:

[madmusic]

10. On the other hand...

If it helps keep youngsters out of prison for life or out of death row, it might work some. Plus, there's always the added benefit of less murder victims.

That's if it really works. In the meantime, guess who's next for GPS and public registry?

[rman]

11. someone has been watching Minority Report a few times to many

[rude boy]

12. I'm going to go out on a limb here

and venture a guess that the potential murderers would be mostly impoverished urban ethnic minority males. It's just more of the same right wing racist gerbil crap.

Remember this gem from Bill Bennett?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509280006

Media Matters exposes Bennett: "< Y >ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down"

Addressing a caller's suggestion that the "lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30 years" would be enough to preserve Social Security's solvency, radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett dismissed such "far-reaching, extensive extrapolations" by declaring that if "you wanted to reduce crime ... if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett conceded that aborting all African-American babies "would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do," then added again, "but the crime rate would go down."

Bennett's remark was apparently inspired by the claim that legalized abortion has reduced crime rates, which was posited in the book Freakonomics (William Morrow, May 2005) by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. But Levitt and Dubner argued that aborted fetuses would have been more likely to grow up poor and in single-parent or teenage-parent households and therefore more likely to commit crimes; they did not put forth Bennett's race-based argument.