Using statistical evidence can increase the chances that you'll get the wrong verdict for someone. The trouble with statistical evidence is that it tends to reinforce these sorts of concentrations, he says. John Hope Franklin was at a fancy banquet in his honor in Washington, D.C., where all of the service staff was black and the guests were mostly white. Now suppose a rich white lady decides that she needs to hand her coat to one of the staff, but she doesn't know what John Hope Franklin looks like. She is risking the mistreatment of John Hope Franklin, and in fact contributing to an ongoing mistreatment of him.
Predictive policing technology is spreading across the country, and Los Angeles is the epicenter. A small group of LA activists are in a lopsided campaign against billions of dollars in city, federal, and Silicon Valley money using algorithms to predict where and when the next crime is going to occur, and even who the perpetrators are going to be. Barry embeds with the Stop LAPD Spying coalition for a week in Skid Row and investigates how state-of-the-art predictive policing programs work. He then talks to sociologists and philosophers about how big data is changing the relationship between police and the communities they serve. We then turn to the justice of using statistical predictions for the purposes of profiling and police intervention. This is part 1 of 2 on the use of statistical algorithms in criminal justice. Guest voices include the LAPD police commissioners, Hamid Khan, Jamie Garcia, Sarah Brayne, Flora Salim, and Renee Bolinger.
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