Violence Predictors

They are the long dreamt for philosopher’s stone of criminal justice research, but as its mythic namesake suggests, have never yet panned out; but this version currently being tested in Philadelphia is an interesting one to watch.

An excerpt.

“As part of an attempt to fight crime, Philadelphia is now the subject of an experiment never tried in another city: A computer is forecasting who among the city's 49,000 parolees is likeliest to rob, assault, or kill someone.

“Since March, the city's Adult Probation and Parole Department has been using the system to reshuffle the way it assigns cases. Each time someone new comes through intake, a clerk enters his or her name and the computer takes just seconds to fish through a database for relevant information and deliver a verdict of high, medium, or low risk.

"It's a complete paradigm shift for the department," said chief probation and parole officer Robert Malvestuto. "Science has made this available to us. We'd be foolish not to use it."

“Criminologists say the system works - it can identify those most likely to commit violent crimes. But whether Philadelphia can use that to intervene and change people's behavior is still not known. A full evaluation won't be done until the end of the year.

“Yet some probation officers say the changes already are making it far harder for them to help those at lower risk to get off drugs and improve their lives.

“The controversy over the new system cuts to the heart of a long-standing debate: whether parole agencies should control dangerous people or help them reclaim their lives.

“The computer isn't merely crunching data - it is creating its own rules in what is known as "machine learning," a fast-growing technology that enables computers to encroach into the human realms of judgment and decision-making.”