Algorithms and Future Crimes: Welcome to the Racial Profiling of the Future

More and more police departments are turning to "predictive policing," which has proven unmistakably racist.

Across the country, large police departments have been developing their ability to track where crime will happen next using predictive software. Known as “predictive policing,” the practice has made waves in the media over the last few years, capturing the imagination of futurists and tough-on-crime zealots, while offending the sensibilities of basically everyone else.

Proponents describe the program in techno-pragmatist terms, arguing that it uses data to make smart inferences about the future in much the same way meterologists do. Opponents compare the idea to hellishly dystopian stories like The Minority Report, where innocent people are rounded up because a computer said there was a chance they would break the law in the future.

There is one major feature of predictive policing that the libertarian critique often glosses over: it"s unmistakably racist. 

Any attempt to predict future criminality will be based on that of the past. It"s well known that blacks and Hispanics are arrested at a higher rate than whites and comprise the majority of the prison population. If that"s the reality that is supposed to inform who we criminalize in the future, won"t initiatives like predictive policing just perpetuate the racist criminal justice policies and practices of the present?

The Verge took these questions to Chicago to examine the most developed and well-financed iteration of predictive policing in the country. The Chicago Police Department users data on past crimes, information about disturbance calls and calls regarding suspicious persons to create a crime map that “highlights neighborhoods of the city that might soon be at risk of an uptick in crime.”

Keeping with the dry data-babbling sell, the predictive analyst behind Chicago"s program, Dr. Miles Wernick, compares it to his previous work in weather forecasting. “The recommendations of the mapping system will not replace the expertise of police officers, but instead [will] highlight potential concerns so police can take them into account,” he says.

CPD has also created a “heat list” comprised of around 400 Chicagoans who are “most likely to be involved in violent crime.” Police have already visited the homes of 60 people on the list, warning them like a schoolteacher warns a class clown that if they screw up, the law will be watching, and there will be serious consequences. 

Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, summed up concerns about CPD"s use of predictive policing:

“Are people ending up on this list simply because they live in a crappy part of town and know people who have been troublemakers? How many people of color are on this heat list? Is the list all black kids? Is this list all kids from Chicago’s South Side? If so, are we just closing ourselves off to this small subset of people?”

For the moment, those questions cannot be answered because the CPD blocked an attempt by The Verge to access the heat list through a request filed under the Freedom of Information Act. 

Wernick insists, delusionally, that predictive policing “evaluates the risk of violence in an unbiased, quantitative way,” reaching for a smoking analogy to justify his claim:

[It is] similar manner to how the medical field has identified statistically that smoking is a risk factor for lung cancer. Of course, everybody who smokes doesn"t get lung cancer, but it demonstrably increases the risk dramatically. The same is true of violent crime.

Wernick and the CPD want to put already blighted communities in their crosshairs for enhanced police presence. Imagine that if instead of targeting them for more patrolling, they were targeted for more schools, social workers, and community-building resources.

Surely, that too would have an impact on the future of crime.

 

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Algorithms and Future Crimes: Welcome to the Racial Profiling of the Future

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Chinese Welcome "Two-Child" Policy, But Can They Afford It?

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A man and child walk in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Nov. 17. China’s government recently announced an easing of the country’s one-child policy. While the move appears to be broadly supported, many Chinese parents say it would be hard to afford a second child.

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A man and child walk in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Nov. 17. China’s government recently announced an easing of the country’s one-child policy. While the move appears to be broadly supported, many Chinese parents say it would be hard to afford a second child.

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Many Chinese are pleased with the recent announcement that their government will further loosen the country’s one-child policy. Some couples there are already allowed to have two children, while others say that even if they permitted to have another kid, they can’t afford it.

A young, professional couple surnamed Gao and Deng went to a government office in Shanghai earlier this month to apply for a marriage license.

Waiting on a metal bench, Gao, the 30-year-old groom-to-be, said he was glad more couples will be able to have a second child.

“I think for people like us who were born after 1980s, this is a very good policy change,” said Gao. “Now, if families are financially capable and conditions allow, they should totally have two children.”

Deng, the bride-to-be, who wore a long pink dress, said the couple hopes to have two children.

“They can help each other and grow up together,” she said. “When we get older, they can take care of each other.”

In fact, Deng and Gao are already permitted to have two children.

A Steady Policy Evolution

More than a decade ago, the government began allowing couples to have two kids if both parents were only-children. It’s a reminder that China has been easing its one-child policy over the years.

Officials took a further step in that direction this month, announcing that if just one parent is an only child, a couple can have a second child as well.

That’s incremental change, but many see it as progress after years of lobbying.

Wang Feng, a leading demographer in China and a sociologist at the University of California, Irvine, has spent more than a decade urging Chinese officials to change the one-child policy. Until relatively recently, he says, the topic was too sensitive for public discussion.

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“Three years ago, I was turned away from a television studio minutes before they were going to discuss this in their evening program, because of orders from the state news control organization,” says Wang from his office at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

Wang credits this month’s policy change to a new, more confident group of Chinese leaders who took office earlier this year. He says they seem to recognize the policy has created big demographic problems in China, including a rapidly aging society and a shrinking labor force.

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The policy is also very unpopular among ordinary Chinese. It has lead to abductions of would-be mothers, forced abortions and cost Chinese parents more than $ 4 billion in fines last year alone.

“This is an important gesture,” says Wang. “The government is getting out of our bedroom and, also, the government is finally reacting to the decade-long appeal from all different ranks in society to phase out an obviously outdated policy.”

Estimates vary, but Wang thinks the policy change will only apply to about 10 million couples – small by Chinese standards — and most of them, he thinks, are unlikely to have a second child.

Some are simply too old. For others, raising another kid is just too expensive.

Yu Juxiang, a retired maid, is chasing her 2-year-old grandson around a Shanghai Toy-R-Us. Yu would like to have another grandchild, even though this one is handful, but she says the extended family just can’t afford it.

“It’s hard enough to raise one child,” she says. “He’s still little, every month we spend $ 600 to $ 800 on him: baby formula, diapers, nutritional powder, fruits and so on. It’s a lot of expense.”

Yu’s son drives a taxicab and makes at most $ 820 a month in a city where home prices, already crushing, have jumped more than 20 percent since October last year.

According to Chinese custom, men must buy a home before they can marry.
Yu wonders how her grandson will afford it.

“When he grows up, he will have to find a wife, buy an apartment and a car,” Yu says. “For boys, these things are non-negotiable. If you don’t have money, you will need to borrow from other people in order to buy a home. The thought of buying a home really gives me a headache.”

Provincial officials will roll out the new policy over time. Wang Feng, the demographer, expects it will result in just another 1 million to 2 million babies annually over the next several years.

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“The Returned”: Back from the dead — and not necessarily welcome

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Fifty Shades of Grey author E.L. James, has not only officially confirmed Jamie Dornan’s casting – she has firmly thrown her support behind him. The best-selling author tweeting a welcoming word to Dornan, the newly cast leading man for the upcoming film version of the steamy novel.

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Sen. Cruz returns to Texas welcome after shutdown battle...

By Jim Forsyth

SAN ANTONIO (Reuters) – Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a favorite of the conservative Tea Party movement, returned home to a rousing welcome in Texas on Saturday after his attempt to derail Obamacare with a shutdown of the federal government led to sharp criticism of his tactics as reckless and futile.

“After two months in Washington, it’s great to be back in America,” Cruz joked in speaking to a crowd of about 750 people in a packed downtown San Antonio hotel ballroom.

Cruz was greeted with an eight-minute standing ovation in an appearance organized by the Texas Federation of Republican Women. People in attendance, many of them wearing red to show their support for keeping Texas a conservative-leaning state, lined up to greet him.

The speech and another talk earlier in the day at a panel in Austin marked Cruz’s first public appearance in his home state of Texas since his part in the showdown in Washington over the rollout of Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day shutdown of the federal government that ended on Thursday.

A related stalemate over the debt limit threatened to lead to a default on U.S. government debt until the Senate on Wednesday voted 81-18 to end the crisis and the House of Representatives followed with a vote of 285-144 to approve the plan, allowing government to open without defunding Obamacare.

Cruz in his speech in San Antonio blasted Senate Republican leaders for “failing to stand with House Republicans against the train wreck that is Obamacare.”

He declined to criticize any Republicans by name.

While he said the agreement to end the shutdown and extend the debt ceiling was a “lousy deal for the American people,” Cruz said the battle he and other Republicans waged will end up helping his party.

Cruz became a lightning rod for criticism from Democrats and even from key Republicans when he staged a 21-hour filibuster-style talk on the floor of the Senate last month, as part of his attempt to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Texas senator, who has been in office for 10 months since his election last year, received scathing criticism from Democrats, the White House and even some of his fellow Republicans in the Senate during the shutdown and the debate leading up to it.

Senator John McCain from Arizona, a former presidential candidate, and Representative Peter King from New York have been two of the most vocal Republican opponents of Cruz’s tactics, with McCain calling Cruz and his allies “wacko birds.”

Cruz also took a hit in the polls. A Gallup poll released on October 10 found he had gained significant name recognition, but the percentage of Americans with an unfavorable view of him has jumped to 36 percent from 18 percent in June.

But the welcome Cruz received in Texas demonstrated his popularity among many Republican activists has grown.

In an interview with Reuters after his speech, Cruz said there is “a lot to be encouraged about” after the battle in Washington.

“We saw what can happen when the American people unite, when the American people stand up,” he said. “What the American people want is economic growth and job creation. They are crying out for something that fixes all the enormous damage that Obamacare is causing.”

(Additional reporting by Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri; Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Eric Walsh)

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Sen. Cruz returns to Texas welcome after shutdown battle...

Forced Evictions, Anti-Gay Laws, and Dead Workers: Welcome to World Cup Prep

Last week, the Guardian published a report into the slavelike conditions of Qatar’s World Cup construction projects. Detailing the tragic deaths of 44 Nepalese migrant workers and the squalid conditions of thousands more prepping for the event in 2022, the Guardian‘s reporting has rightfully drawn the attention of the international community. But labor relations aren’t the only issue in Qatar—and the Middle Eastern state is far from an exception among World Cup hosts. In fact, all three of the next Cup locations have been widely criticized for human rights and inequality issues.

Here are some of the more egregious examples:

BRAZIL (2014)

Last week, a Brazilian government investigation into the Sao Paulo Guarulhos International airport expansion project—set for completion before next year’s World Cup—revealed more than 100 workers living in “conditions analogue to slaves.” According to the BBC, while workers were promised $ 625 a month in wages, some had paid more than $ 220 just to secure a job. Many more were forced into makeshift camps near the airport while waiting for their employment to begin.

In addition to labor concerns, there’s also the question of what to do with all the new infrastructure after the event is over, when operational costs and low returns could leave Brazil’s stadiums like South Africa’s unviable “White Elephants.” (There, the government only recovered a tenth of its World Cup investment.) According to one report, a local official preemptively suggested the $ 240 million 44,500 seat Arena da Amazonia be repurposed as a prison. Of course, that’s assuming a soccer stadium can be maintained at all in a rainforest climate, where humidity and sun can buckle steel and melt the color off seats.

All this poor planning and waste only serves to underscore Brazil’s staggering economic disparity. While Brazil has quickly become the sixth-largest economy in the world, its distribution of wealth is one of the worst in the world, meaning most of that money is going to people at the top. This past June, the “Services Not Soccer” protests questioned spending some $ 13.3 billion on the 2014 World Cup and $ 18 billion on the Rio 2016 Olympic Games—especially with Brazil struggling to deal with big issues like health care, education, and political corruption. Now, the stadium development is forcibly evicting people from slums and raising ticket prices, driving out the poor and working-class fans whose money previously kept struggling soccer clubs alive.

RUSSIA (2018)

In many ways, the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, will act as a litmus test for how international LGBT athletes and advocates are treated under the country’s harsh anti-gay law. If Mother Jones‘ previous reporting is any indication, the results could be alarming.

Russian soccer has also been criticized for its inability to fix hooliganism and racism. In 2011, Brazilian soccer player Roberto Carlos had a banana thrown at him within months of joining Russian FC Anzhi Makhachkala. In 2012, his Congolese teammate Christopher Samba received similar treatment. Two years earlier, Alexey Sorokin, then-director of the Russian Football Union, defended several fans who put a banana on a banner to taunt Peter Odemwingie, claiming the banana as Soviet slang with “nothing racial in it.” A leader in Russia’s World Cup bid, Sorokin is now the appointed CEO of the 2018 World Cup Local Organizing Committee. According to the BBC, right before FIFA chose Russia to host the Cup, the Russian Football Union released a memo and announced a website to combat racism. Notably, the site is still offline. And in 2012, Zenit St. Petersburg fans wrote an open letter claiming that using “dark-skinned players” only “brings out a negative reaction” and that gay players were “unworthy of our great city.”

As with the Sochi Olympics, unexpected costs have plagued the 2018 World Cup. The cost of updating transportation, building and renovating stadiums, and ensuring infrastructure and events run smoothly for the entirety of the Cup is now over $ 20 billion, twice as much as previously projected. Part of the problem? Hosting games in remote cities like Saransk, where the only flight from Moscow is on an overnight propeller plane and the city’s primary achievement is as a onetime center of the Gulag prison system. These costs, combined with the $ 50 billion price tag of the Olympic games, could make a heavy dent in Russia’s near-zero-growth economy.
 

QATAR (2022)

Qatar’s treatment of migrant workers has long been a problem. Prior to the Guardian investigation, Human Rights Watch called out Qatar’s exit visa system and employment sponsorship system. Both require a resident to vouch for a worker’s ability and can effectively prevent a migrant from starting work, finding housing, or even leaving the country. Within World Cup construction sites, thousands of workers have spoken out about confiscated passports and visas, cramped living situations (up to 20 people in a single room), and forced labor in desert heat without food or water. (Don’t worry, fans and players: Organizers are mulling a massive air-conditioning system for you.) These conditions led to the death of 44 Nepalese workers from June 4 to August 8 alone.

Altogether, current estimates for Qatar’s World Cup facilities, transportation, air conditioning, and construction of an entirely new city come in at a whopping $ 220 billion, approximately 1.3 times the country’s total annual GDP. While Qatar’s GDP is undeniably large for its size, that’s 60 times what South Africa spent on the 2010 World Cup. Note: The richest Qataris make as much as 13 times more than the poorest.

Homosexuality is also illegal in Qatar, and foreigners have previously been whipped, imprisoned, and deported as punishment. Since Shariah law is effect, Qatari Muslims could theoretically be executed for homosexuality. Three years ago, when asked what gay fans should do in Qatar, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said, “They should refrain from any sexual activities.” Now, FIFA is reported to be pressuring Russia and Qatar to relax anti-gay laws during the World Cup, but with the games still several years away, a decision may not come anytime soon.

In the meantime, there have been some rumblings about moving the event, maybe even to the United States. Unfortunately for US soccer supporters (and perhaps migrant workers and gay fans), the relocation dream remains just that.

Politics | Mother Jones

Forced Evictions, Anti-Gay Laws, and Dead Workers: Welcome to World Cup Prep

Video: Not All South Africans Welcome Obama

Hundreds of South Africans host an angry protest in Pretoria against Obama’s visit…

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