[awlo]

I find this fragment really insightful. Seems like it's a common mistake in a lot of domains.

"Over the last fifteen years or so, many police agencies started capturing data on police interactions. The primary purpose was to document what had historically been undocumented: informal street contacts. By capturing specific data, we were able to ask ourselves tough questions about potentially biased-policing. Many agencies are still struggling with the answers to those questions.

Regardless, the data permitted us to detect problematic patterns, commonly referred to as passive discrimination. This is a type of discrimination that occurs when we are not aware of how our own biases affect our decisions. This kind of bias must be called to our attention, and there must be accountability to correct it."

[nsfmc]

This portion of the post that deals with 'random' data gathering is pretty interesting because it almost reads like a case study on how to discover flaws and biases in software development, testing, & analysis.

It's almost like a reminder that you forcibly need to step outside yourself to discover passive behaviors that can result in flaws or exploits or what have you.

[CWuestefeld]

I'm not so sure. I read the OP to say that they're making efforts to ensure that no demographic group is getting a larger proportion of scrutiny.

She says nothing about how this correlates to actual crimes. I assume that she's intentionally trying to keep that out of the picture -- but doesn't that make them less efficient? If young adult males account for a lion's share of the crime, then why force yourself to look away from them and choose an old lady?

Surely there's a difference when you're trying to prevent a very small number of high-profile events, versus regular police work. In trying to stop a terrorist organization, they've (presumably) got the resources to play this to their own benefit by intentionally choosing that old lady as their agent. On the other hand, in day-to-day police work, I'd think that statistics are everything: the potential criminal is a young man, and there's precious little he can do about that, so (assuming that's what the statistics say), that's where one ought to concentrate.

[awlo]

You've got a point there. More data would be nice too.

My understanding of it, is that the data is used to check whether some groups don't receive too much unnecessary attention at the cost of not paying enough attention to other groups because of some non concious bias.

"On the other hand, in day-to-day police work, I'd think that statistics are everything"

Statistics are worth attention, but I really hope they're not everything in police work;)

[chopsueyar]

You are what you measure.