[jimbob45]

I was more upset that the parent was implying that his neighborhood would have equal arrest numbers if the police had been more present on account of his pot smoking. I hope everyone can see what a stupid argument that is and that’s the hill I’m willing to die on here.

[Jtsummers]

> There are tons of other stupid things I did when younger where if there had been more cops around I would have gone to jail.

That's what the person you replied to said. Not that more police would have been more arrests based on (just) their pot smoking, but on other behavior as well. I saw a lot of vandalism that led to kids being dragged by their ears back to their parents in middle-class neighborhoods, that would've resulted in arrests (even for misdemeanors) for kids in poor neighborhoods (where I've also lived and seen this difference).

In white neighborhoods small crimes would lead to police dragging the kid home, in minority neighborhoods they'd end up with a misdemeanor record (at least). All of this creates a bias in the algorithms which generally assume that someone with a criminal record of some sort is going to be a higher risk individual (which is probably a safe assumption for many crimes), but it is biased because people aren't charged with crimes at equal rates due to the biases in the existing system that these algorithms are more likely to exacerbate than alleviate. Now that the minority community has a thicker criminal record, the policing in that neighborhood continues to go up which continues to create increased conflict between the police and residents as the police end up arresting people for increasingly minor offenses, along with the major ones.

A lack of policing or difference in attitude of the police in poor and/or minority communities versus middle-class/wealthy and/or white communities is very much present in the US (and probably the world). This leads algorithms like those under discussion to end up inheriting the same or similar biases, whether the developers and marketers intended it or not.

[kelnos]

I think maybe you're missing the point? I don't think the parent was implying that there'd be equal arrest numbers.

The difference is that if you send all the cops to the "bad neighborhoods", then the "good neighborhoods" get away with a lot of crime, even if that crime is low-level.

Let's say all neighborhoods have 100 instances of low-level crime per day. A so-called "bad" neighborhood -- where most of the cops get sent to -- also has instances of much worse crime.

The end result of this officer allocation scheme is that people get arrested in the "bad" neighborhood for a mix of low-level crime and worse crime. But pretty much no one at all gets arrested in the "good" neighborhood, because there's basically no police presence there. So maybe you see in the "good" neighborhood a handful of arrests for those 100 instances of low-level crime, but in the "bad" neighborhood you see 60 arrests for that similar crime. (You also see arrests for more severe crime, but that's not the point.)

I'm of course making up numbers here, but regardless of the magnitude of the numbers, even if they differ between neighborhoods, the percentage of crime handled ends up being much lower in the "good" neighborhoods because of the simple fact that police aren't there to handle it. Sure, they'll come out if called, but response time is longer, and they have very little ability to see things happening in real-time.

Meanwhile, if you feed this data into your algorithm, it will start to believe that there's basically no low-level crime in the "good" neighborhoods -- even though it's the same! -- so it prioritizes those neighborhoods even less.

If you feed an algorithm bad data, it will only give you more bad data. And it becomes worse when you act on that data and feed it more results based on that bad data.

[adjkant]

That very specific qualm doesn't mean that increased police presence helps though in the higher crime neighborhood. See my previous response, but basically all things can be true.

It can (and evidence supports that) at ac basic level:

1. There are more crimes committed in one neighborhood than another

2. Increasing police presence in the higher crime neighborhood does not decrease the occurrence of such crimes

3. Increased police presence leads to unjustified disproportionate enforcement of smaller violations being broken equally by both neighborhoods

Your original reply goes much farther than simply claiming less natural crime, and then adds a lot of armchair sociology without backing. When you ask rhetorical questions and follow with "I don't know", you are implying without evidence and it's not a constructive argument that appears in good faith.

[wonderwonder]

Given a long enough timeline of increased arrests, police presence and assumption of guilt, why would my neighborhood not eventually have the same number of arrests and crime. Unless your argument is that there is something physically different in the other neighborhood that drives them towards crime. If that's your argument and I am having a hard time seeing what else it could be then I think we are done here.

[kortilla]

Of course poor neighborhoods are going to have higher crime. Unless you have been truly poor you won’t understand the sense of desperation that can lead to bad decisions.

You grow up in a food scarce household with a parent addicted to painkillers with no guidance on what a path to a successful future is and crime becomes a lot more palatable. Getting in the game starts to look like the only possible way to “make it”.

[Digit-Al]

I agree. Every time there is an article like this you get the same arguments, the same discussions, and the same comments. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over again.

But if you actually bother to do some reading on the subject the conclusions are overwhelmingly clear. Over and over again social programs show very clearly that if you improve education and give people better opportunities to escape the poverty trap and better themselves you reduce crime.

The formula is simple really: if you give people opportunities to make an honest living then they will, for the most part, make an honest living; if you don't give people the opportunity to make an honest living then they will, for the most part, make a dishonest living.

[wonderwonder]

I agree with you but my question is does increased police presence lead to a poor neighborhood. Take for example a middle class white neighborhood. If there was a sudden and very visible increased presence over years, arresting people for minor offences, watching everyone and questioning everyone, would that neighborhood become a poor neighborhood. I think it would. I think people who could would move out, property values would drop and the people who could not move out would have a higher predisposition to crime as they were worked into the system.