Several US States Bet That AI Can Solve Their Prison Recidivism Crisis (msn.com) 152
America's state prison systems need ways "to keep people from returning to prison," reports the Wall Street Journal, "when an estimated 40% end up back behind bars within three years."
Part of the problem comes in the form of filing cabinets, manila folders and legacy digital databases. In other words, records for a single prisoner might be kept in a dozen places... Now a group of 19 prison systems are tackling the problem with digital tools and artificial intelligence in some cases. They are contracting with San Francisco nonprofit Recidiviz, whose computer systems bring together prisoner data from its disparate sources into digital dashboards. From there, corrections staff can see information — such as court records and notes from parole-board hearings — about a prisoner or parolee all in one place.
The company says its efforts are working: Recidivism has fallen 16% in the prison population its systems track. It is the result of "just streamlining these workflows and knitting someone's journey together end to end," says Clementine Jacoby, chief executive officer of Recidiviz. Some criminal-justice groups show that recidivism is trending downward in general, though most of that data is nearly a decade old... The statistics from 11 states stop at 2019, and for four states stop at 2016. With 10 other states, no data was reported.
The company says its efforts are working: Recidivism has fallen 16% in the prison population its systems track. It is the result of "just streamlining these workflows and knitting someone's journey together end to end," says Clementine Jacoby, chief executive officer of Recidiviz. Some criminal-justice groups show that recidivism is trending downward in general, though most of that data is nearly a decade old... The statistics from 11 states stop at 2019, and for four states stop at 2016. With 10 other states, no data was reported.
Betteidge's law (Score:3, Insightful)
No. It can't.
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ACs can't smell (Score:2)
That's why they stink?
Oh, wait. I meant "spell", but they and their "you can't blame me if you don't know who I am" ideas do stink, too.
I should include some flavor of the old joke about mud wrestling with pigs, but that would take effort and the propagation only spanned about 1/6 of the discussion (by ye olde scrollbar metric), so such effort isn't justified.
But a joke related to the story? Can AIs solve the AC slop crisis? Or a joke about prison for ACs, coming real soon if'n AC actually lives in the wron
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There is no question that states are betting on AI.
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Additionally, the way it's phrased, as a "bet," is implicitly skeptical.
Re: Betteidge's law (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Betteidge's law (Score:5, Insightful)
ok cool (Score:4, Interesting)
America's state prison systems need ways "to keep people from returning to prison,"
A noble and excellent goal. 90% of Americans can support this (the others are profiting from it).
bring together prisoner data from its disparate sources into digital dashboards. From there, corrections staff can see information — such as court records and notes from parole-board hearings — about a prisoner or parolee all in one place.
Ok, sounds like a great thing for computers to do. If they can get AI to help, then great. (Note: the AI isn't going to open manila folders).
The company says its efforts are working: Recidivism has fallen 16% in the prison population its systems track. It is the result of "just streamlining these workflows and knitting someone's journey together end to end,
Sounds like they are not releasing people with a high risk of recidivism. In other words, they haven't fixed the problem of recidivism, they've just kept people in jail longer.
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they've just kept people in jail longer.
See, they found a way to get the support of the ones profitting from it.
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Re:ok cool (Score:5, Insightful)
16% sounds pretty low, but it's probably reasonable. There are a lot of people in prison who can't be let out. I'm sorry, you stab someone, the chance of rehabilitation is very low. If they get 20 years, they need to stay in 20 years. Maybe they'll be too old to hurt anyone then, or the time will make them realize how shit they are. Most often a lot, they'll commit a violent crime again and then won't get out ever. I think of this tragic case of a woman who befriended her mom's killer and was then murdered by him after she helped him get parole:
https://people.com/crime/ark-w... [people.com]
There is a kind of suicidal empathy in wanting to help everyone on the street or in the prison system. It denies the realize that for over half the people on the street, they have literally fucked over all their friends, all their family members and anyone who could possibly help them. Their friends are now others on the street who have done the same. Some people don't get in the loop. One of my best friends is a court reporter, and despite all the awful stuff she has to record, she also sees people who come into the court room, cleaned up, their lives turned around and coming off probation. So people can turn around their lives, but they have to want it.
I'm just glad this article wasn't about trying to use AI chatbots to directly change behavior of inmates. That would just be straight up AI-psychosis talk.
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people who have no right to privacy anyway due to the harm they caused others.
Your problem starts here. Right to privacy is a human right, and these were established as response to the 3rd Reich catastrophe. One characteristic is that you cannot lose a human right, regardless of what you do. It can be temporarily restricted if another thing has priority, but it cannot be removed. Hence people like you are into violating human rights and as soon as that starts to be a general sentiment, a state/group/organization is on a very dark path. Yes, you may be able to get some statistic to lo
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> Your problem starts here. Right to privacy is a human right
Show me where in the American constitution where you have a right to privacy? The 4th amendment is against unreasonable search and seizure. It's a hard steep climb from that to privacy as a right. Now that Planned Parenthood v Cassey and Row v Wade have been repealed, it's even a harder sell.
> you cannot lose a human right
Who gives you rights? This entire concept of
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Human rights are merely social norms for the times. 1000 years ago, we had different social norms. 1000 years from now, we will have different social norms. If we continue on this track, you won't be allowed to eat meat, as animals will have "rights" as well. We already have some jurisdictions that give "rights" to bees.
Are they unalienable? Hardly, they get alienated all the time.
As far as taking rights away, you most certainly can! Any time someone murder's another human, they have effectively taken ALL t
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Human rights are merely social norms for the times. 1000 years ago, we had different social norms.
Nope. Rights are not norms. There are many places in the world where a majority of the population would not agree with one or more of the rights described in the Declaration of Human Rights.
1000 years from now, we will have different social norms
Perhaps, if there still is society. But whatever it is, people will need to eat, have a place to sleep, to make decisions about their own bodies...those all seem pretty universal, no? I don't get how the idea of adequate nutrition as a basic human right is framed as nothing more than a "social norm"?
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Are they unalienable? Hardly, they get alienated all the time. As far as taking rights away, you most certainly can!
Strawman fallacy. I never said rights could never be taken away. In fact, if it can't be taken away, then it can't be given or received, so then it isn't anything at all.
The idea of something being a right means a person should have access to *thing* because they are human; not because they are rich, from a certain race, from a certain country, a certain gender, etc.
If we continue on this track, you won't be allowed to eat meat, as animals will have "rights" as well. We already have some jurisdictions that give "rights" to bees.
Slippery slope fallacy. Saying people have rights doesn't mean that we have to give the same rights to all animals or creatures. It makes no
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It's okay. I'm sorry you're retarded. I really am.
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I'm sorry, you stab someone, the chance of rehabilitation is very low. If they get 20 years, they need to stay in 20 years.
I'm glad you Nazis are on the other side of the pond.
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Sounds like they are not releasing people with a high risk of recidivism. In other words, they haven't fixed the problem of recidivism, they've just kept people in jail longer.
Exactly. There are many people who just know they messed up, and in reality, have no intention of doing more crime. Then there are people who perhaps have little to no impulse control, or for one reason or another just think criminally. There are some people who just can't be rehabilitated.
Occasionally , it is a chemical thing, like lead in gasoline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. His research was pretty shocking, as lead damaged people tended to be involved in violent crime.
But there are some cases
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There are some people who just can't be rehabilitated.
No that is too strong a claim. The best you can say is, "There are people we don't know how to rehabilitate."
Our understanding of the brain and psychology is so weak that over the next century or so, our knowledge is going to increase dramatically. Not long ago, people were seriously doing lobotomies (there's an argument to be made that we are still doing it today, but with chemicals. Certainly our understanding and treatment of ADHD will improve dramatically in the future, and what we do now will seem ar
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I mean, liberals are the ones that gave everyone a vote. If you give a moron a vote, you should expect moronic voting out of that person.
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As I understand, people who are in your first category (earnest desire to avoid crime in the future) find that nobody trusts them. Their criminal history follows them around so jobs are unavailable to them, promotions are unavailable, etc. This creates the very economic conditions that drive them right back into crime.
I don't know how much this actually happens, it's just a plausible narrative that I read about a while back.
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i know someone is that situation, after being incarcerated for less than a year.
he does have assets & some savings he hasn't touched yet but were it not for that, he'd be screwed.
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As I understand, people who are in your first category (earnest desire to avoid crime in the future) find that nobody trusts them. Their criminal history follows them around so jobs are unavailable to them, promotions are unavailable, etc. This creates the very economic conditions that drive them right back into crime.
I don't know how much this actually happens, it's just a plausible narrative that I read about a while back.
Yeah, there is a stigma, that if anyone deciding to commit crimes, might possibly give a little thought to the future before deciding that committing a crime is a good idea.
It's kinda like the story of would you want your daughter marrying a man who just got out of jail after killing his first wife? There is a value to having impulse control, and looking beyond what they want to do right now.
There are all manner of narratives - I guess I have one too. There are narratives that if everyone has money, fr
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I do not think there are mysterious cases. There are just some where people chose not to cooperate enough for us to make a determination and that is their right.
Also note that there are quite a few "too important to jail" cases, see, for example some prominent stock scammers or rapists and child abusers or murderers/war criminals. These cases are probably the worst, because they give not-smart people the impression that you can get away with it. And hence overall ethics decline.
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I do not think there are mysterious cases. There are just some where people chose not to cooperate enough for us to make a determination and that is their right.
Well. we learn over time. Before Herbert Needleman, the dangers of lead poisoning were known, but it's effects upon people, who from childhood were exposed, and they ended up being violent criminals - that was fairly new, and compelling enough to knock some sense into people.
Another case I know personally, a friend had adopted a young boy, who was troubled, and the thought was a better environment would eliminate those issues. I liked the kid. Most of the time, he was great. Outgoing, friendly, smart. Bu
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If they're keeping the habitual criminals in prison, and it means fewer crimes committed against decent law-abiding folk, then what's the problem? Isn't the purpose of our laws and penal system to protect the innocent?
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As you say: at a certain point you have to switch from "what about the poor criminal" to "what about their poor victims" to have a functioning society.
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Sounds like they are not releasing people with a high risk of recidivism. In other words, they haven't fixed the problem of recidivism, they've just kept people in jail longer.
Which is totally fine. There are a TON of stats out there that show a relatively small amount of repeat offenders tends to create the most crime. Hell, call it a 10 strikes and you're out and you will see a significantly large amount of criminal reduction.
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That's not how I read it, it sounds to me like the disparate record keeping caused a single person to be counted as multiple people, each of which may have been counted as recidivist. E.G. one guy gets arrested and spends time in jail/prison a half dozen times in LA, then moves to Miami where they continue to break the law and end up in jail multiple times. This should naturally skew the results as in order for a person to have records in multiple jurisdictions/systems they had to break the law multiple t
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Re:The Unaccountability Industry. (Score:5, Insightful)
TLDR "listen up liberals, my wife left me"
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No AI required (Score:4, Insightful)
Look at the prison models of almost any other industrialized Western country - make even the slightest genuine effort to reform people instead of considering them subhuman to be inhumanely tortured by the circumstances of their confinement followed by blocking them from participating in the economy upon release and results will improve.
Improve public education and remove inequalities and you remove crime as the best option for catching up to everyone else.
AI won't be used to help convicts, because nobody in the US wants to help them. It'll be used to better manage their shackles for increased profits.
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https://www.unibocconi.it/en/n... [unibocconi.it]
https://www.instituteforgovern... [institutef...ent.org.uk]
Norway is good, though.
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Ideally the recidivism rate should be zero. It's not easy, though.
Re:No AI required (Score:5, Interesting)
And most importantly, stop employers looking up your criminal history with the exception of a very few cases, like jobs working with children. Once you've served your time, you've served your time, and shouldn't be locked into a permanent future of being unemployable.
Re:No AI required (Score:4, Interesting)
There are some things where I think it's fair to never trust that person fully again. Ever. But we need a way to trust them enough to let them live and participate in society if we believe they are rehabilitated while still protecting everyone around them.
I'm sure that's not easy, but it has to be easier than lifetime incarceration.
Re:No AI required (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some things where I think it's fair to never trust that person fully again. Ever. But we need a way to trust them enough to let them live and participate in society if we believe they are rehabilitated while still protecting everyone around them.
I'm sure that's not easy, but it has to be easier than lifetime incarceration.
Off the top of my head, maybe RCA. Root Cause Analysis.
Say a guy gets depressed and murders his family. RCA finds underlying history of depression and pressures of work led to the event. Maybe mandatory anti-depressant treatment and monitoring, and he's never allowed to have a high-stress job.
Say someone keeps doing B&Es. RCA finds it's because they're homeless, poor, uneducated, and drug-addicted. Maybe shelter, basic food, and mandatory education can break that addiction.
Basically, people do what they do for a reason. Remove the reason and behavior can change.
I'm not sure the "justice system" takes any interest in the why of a crime.
Re:No AI required (Score:5, Interesting)
There are some things where I think it's fair to never trust that person fully again. Ever.
Trust should be limited to the activity you can't be trusted. Where I live employers can request from the police an approval. But that approval is compared to the requested job position.
E.g. if a bank askes the police for this history of a convicted paedophile, they will get a reply saying there's nothing of concern in the history. Likewise if a school asks about the criminal history of someone committed of money laundering they'll also be told there's nothing of concern. On the flip side if the school asks about the paedophile or the bank asks about the money launderer they'll get a hit saying the person has a criminal past related to their job application.
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Where I live employers can request from the police an approval. But that approval is compared to the requested job position.
This sounds like a good compromise. When I was younger we had a "proof of age" card that people could use instead of a drivers licence to buy alcohol. The proof of age card was much cheaper to acquire and didn't have all the extra information like a residential address on there. It didn't really matter in the 1990s but now that venues of scan and retain patrons' ID (creating a juicy target for ID thieves) it seems like an even better idea.
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Indeed. But the religious fundamentalists want people to be damned forever (!) and hence that is the prevalent sentiment in the US. Guess what, people that get no chance to reintegrate into society do not do so. Also makes for a nice "us vs. them" world-view, something the fundamentalists absolutely love.
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You see, there is one thing that is called "propaganda". It is what you have eaten up. Then there is another thing called "reality" or "actual intent". It is something entirely different.
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The problem is, people that have committed crimes have proven they will criminally lie, cheat, steal, victimize and otherwise harm others for their own personal gain. I've worked in the security-cleared sector and work with PII and PHI. You need people of higher moral character who won't misuse that data for personal gain or entertainment. We don't want people that have proven they will do such things in places where they can harm others or their employer.
Personality traits drive criminal behavior. Blaming
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And in the Soviet Union everybody knew many of these were not real criminals ...
Sounds like AI isn't really a significant part... (Score:5, Informative)
The story makes pretty clear that they've been working this a long while, before at least the current hyped LLM was available.
To the extent "AI" might even play a role given their timeline, it was stuff that was pretty useless. People tried unleashing machine learning on these sorts of records and it just didn't do much.
Sounds like it's just a run at modernizing records keeping and access, which is fine.
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People tried unleashing machine learning on these sorts of records and it just didn't do much.
I can't read the article, it's paywalled.
What's the theory? How does better recordkeeping reduce recidivism? Does this enable, say, better interactions during parole? Or does it help make better decisions about who to parole? What facility to confine prisoners in?
I'm all for better recordkeeping but I don't see how exactly that will help.
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Sounds like it's just a run at modernizing records keeping and access, which is fine.
It seems like a much more sensible goal than letting a spicy autocorrect in there to screw things up. Modernizing records is a great idea. Letting an LLM decide who too lock up, on the other hand, would be a major problem and nobody who suggests it should be allowed anywhere near the prison system.
Here's a thought (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Wikipedia, the US has the fifth highest incarceration rate in the world, at 549 per 100,000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] . Canada - the country next door which is very similar in broad cultural terms - comes in at almost exactly one sixth of that number. So maybe the States might get serious about addressing the huge social and institutional forces which are largely responsible for that discrepancy?
A good start might be to make prisons NOT part of the for-profit private sector. This incentive to 'create' prisoners seems to be a contagion which has spread into policing and the whole justice system. Then you could maybe fix the public education system and introduce universal healthcare. Again, a major culprit here is having ceded care of public-good institutions to for-profit interests. These jobs are neither simple nor easy - but they need to be done.
Huge corporations whose number one mandate is to maximize profit and shareholder return at the expense of all else - are a worldwide problem. We all need to be fighting that fight. And it seems that the US needs to be fighting it more than most other countries.
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Absolutely correct. If prisons are run by for-profit corporations, recidivism is in their interest. More "customers", you see.
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Indeed. As is creating criminals. Hence school-to-prison pipelines and other utter evil.
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Also a problem is the entire support industry for the private prisons. All the special supplies for both prisoners and guards that come from a handful of companies. You know these companies all collude and jack up prices because they're the sole suppliers.
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A historic motive was that prisoners can not vote and felons lose their voting rights. If you didn't know, that was a plan to take black people out from voting. The tradition continues with other excuses covering for it. It's way more about poor people today and there will be many more poor people... with AI powered policing and legal processes you could be a felon quite easily in the future. Hell, if you just oppose fascism you are now a terrorist Antifa supporter (look it up, it's actually happened. BTW
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Canada is about 4% black and the USA is about 14%. In additional that, 20% of the USA is latino, and that number is negligible in Canada.
If you breakdown crime rates *within* these racial groups in both countries, they will likely be comparable (and same for whites, asians as well, comparable as well) to each other.
But since the % of racial group breakdown is different in each country, the crime rates are different.
This is not the only reason though (Canada has far better social programs, as well as a unive
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Canada is about 4% black and the USA is about 14%. In additional that, 20% of the USA is latino, and that number is negligible in Canada.
That may be true; but if you decrease America's incarcerations stats to account for that you'll still have nowhere near the factor-of-six discrepancy in incarceration rate.
Canada has far better social programs, as well as a university system that almost anyone can afford so it is easier to lift one's self out of poverty.
Absolutely true. The education factor you refer to is especially important. But not just because of better access to post-secondary schooling: from everything I've read I gather that, on the whole, Canadian primary and secondary public school graduates have better reading and writing skills than American ones.
That difference may soon disa
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I always thought Canada is the USA done right.
Re:Here's a thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesing that you think universal health care will make criminals become less criminal. How exactly would that work, in practice?
Universal healthcare prevents a LOT of people from becoming criminals. Just try to successfully hold down a job when you're suffering from extreme shortness of breath or chronic pain from herniated discs. People in those situations can't even work as Walmart greeters because they can't stand up for hours at a time, if at all. No job, no money - so how do you eat, and where do you sleep? What would YOU do if you found yourself in that position?
Sure, many of those "too sick to work" people are also too sick to commit crimes, especially violent ones - but they may have dependent families who are also desperate. And even those who manage to get healthcare are effectively trading their homes and jobs for the "luxury" of having their illnesses treated. The illness may be gone; but so is the old job, along with the home that would allow them to keep their shit together long enough to get a new one.
Then, there are crippling psychological and psychiatric disorders. And again, the same downward spiral - no work, no money, no home, and crime to merely stay alive. For some people, crime is the only way to keep body and soul together between the time they can't afford treatment and the time they either die or end up in the "justice" system.
It's also not unheard of for people to commit crimes specifically so they can be put in prison, because they can't figure out any other way to get medical treatment and/or to be housed, clothed, and fed. Just let that sink in for a moment.
We know how, just don't want to. (Score:5, Interesting)
The nordic prison system has a recidivism rate is 20% within the first 2 years and about 25% within 5 years. The US system is 39% within 3 years.
Why don't we use something closer to Norways?
Because the Conservatives call it 'soft on crime'. They have 3 levels of prison: High, Low and Transition. The Low Security prison they use for non-violent first time offenders is what the GOP calls a 'country club' type with private rooms, lots of classes, library and therapy.
You only get their High Security if you were violent or become violent in the Low Security prison.
They also have a half way house/ transition system where they live in a prison but are allowed to go to work outside.
But this is clearly not "Hard on Crime", so Americans refuse to use it.
Note, in my opinion the "Hard on Crime" approach fails because normal prison is hard on crime so when someone claims to be Hard on Crime, what they end up doing is:
1) Push Judges and Police to be hard on SUSPECTS, resulting in more false accusations and more time in Jail waiting for a trial - both of which encourage people to commit more crimes.
2) Push newbie criminals to make friends in jail with the criminals as the guards are cruel and dismissive of the prisoner's concerns.
3) Prevent criminals from getting training and other resources they need while in prison, resulting in a much harder time getting out of the criminal life.
Re: We know how, just don't want to. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because Norway wasn't founded by Puritans and Calvinists and fundamentalist Christians. Predestination makes is easy to rationalize that a person belongs in prison forever.
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I do not know whether predestination plays a role, but wanting to damn people for all eternity (or at least the rest of their natural lives) is a common theme with religious fanatics.
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Actually, no. That's really not it.
Up through especially the 60s and 70s, the American prison system was all about reform over punishment. It changed very quickly in the 80s and 90s and we started incarcerating wildly more people. The current state of the US prison system is far more a modern thing than people realize, it's not some fundamental American core, even as easy as it is to assume it is, as we say it's rooted in slavery and all. (It is, but not half as simply as a single sentence would say.)
Modern
Re:We know how, just don't want to. (Score:4, Insightful)
Get back to me when places like NY and CA stop letting repeat violent offenders out on 'cashless' bail.
If you're accused of assaulting someone for the 2nd (or 3rd and more) time before your first case even makes it to court, you should not be free to continue your rampage.
Equally, we should not make any conviction a lifetime sentence of un-/under-employment. People need the ability to rejoin society and a normal, productive person who made a mistake.
Lastly, when a significant portion of the money spent on prisons is going to corporate profits, we are doing something very very wrong. It's a race to the bottom for everyone but the shareholders.
Re:We know how, just don't want to. (Score:5, Informative)
1) You have been tricked by conservative propaganda. Cashless bail did not increase the rate of crime as compared to cash bail.
2) NY law (and NJ and Illinois) explicitly refused to release violent offenders on cashless bail. California does NOT have a cashless bail law, but the state supreme court has encouraged judges to set cashless bail for non-violent offenders. Both states have explicit language about non-violent only..
3) There were cases when people arrested for non-violent crimes were released on bail and then committed violent offense. There were also cases where the legal definition of violent offenders were ... arguable. But the law said no violent offenders could be released and that law was followed.
4) The real question is, do you think poor people should have no rights and upon being arrested should have to wait in jail for a year or more just because they are poor? You do realize that this will a) cause innocent people to plead guilty to a crime they did not commit if it means they get out of jail in 6 months rather than waiting there a year before they go to trial. b) will destroy their lives even if they are found innocent because a year in jail awaiting trial means they lose their job, house, girlfriend/wife, all while getting assaulted by real criminals, trained by real criminals on how to commit crime and finally JOIN criminal gangs to survive.
5) If you release more people on bail, the number of crimes go up, obviously. This does not mean cashless bail is a bad idea or causing a problem. The question is not whether cashless bail releases commit crimes, but instead Whether people released on cashless bail commit more crimes than people released on cash bail. The answer to that is no. People released on cashless bail are no more likely to commit more crimes than people released on cash bail. The number is about 17% of people released - for both cash bail and cashless bail.
6) If you think the bail system in general is too lenient, you have a better argument, given that 17% commit more crimes.
7) However the real problem is the time spent in jail before trial. Justice should happen in less than 3 months, not more than 12.
8) Cashless bail for non-violent offenders reduces the number of people that end up becoming hardened criminals. That has been proven repeatedly.
9)Most importantly states with cashless bail have LOWER crime rates than states that require cash bail.
There is no way us liberals from NJ (217 violent crimes per 100,000), Illinois (218/100k), and NY (380/100k) are going to follow the advice of idiots from Texas (389/100k), Missouri (462/100k) or Louisiana (519/100k).
NJ and Illinois are just too good at crime prevention to care what the conservatives say. NY (and California) are middle of the pack and might listen, but not likely when idiots talk dumb shit and make up lies.
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If you're accused
I accuse you of being a child rapist. Lock him up boys, his own rule demands it.
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Yes. The claims they want less recidivism are simply lies. It is known how to get these rates down. It is well-known that positive reinforcement works a lot better than negative. It is known that making it easy for people to reintegrate into society, most will go for it. But they want to be "tough on crime". That is denial of reality and that never gives you good outcomes.
On the plus-side, large prison populations are good for keeping our citizens in fear and laws that criminalize everything and anything al
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Conservatives (not the tribal brand, actual meaning) are only correct by accident:
The philosophy is founded upon appeal to tradition which is a logical fallacy. They will fire up their brains sometimes and rationalize excuses in a reactionary defense which is inherently flawed and anti-science; rather than use their brains to discover truth, they do what feels good (often selfish) then use their brains to excuse what is arrived by thoughtlessness.
Contradiction, hipocracy and distraction a constant problem
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In the past, filling up (Score:2)
LMMFAO! (Score:2, Interesting)
So if I read this right (Score:3)
As it is NOW, they don't even KNOW that they are recidivists, since they do not have the data from previous times.
The real solution (Score:2)
Focus on the people, at both ends (Score:4, Insightful)
A small % commit most crimes. Worst of the worst. Focus on them. 3 strikes and you're out
Require inmates to get a GED and learn a trade to get out. So they don't think they need to be criminals to survive. And get them off drugs.
We don't have enough plumbers, mechanics, welders, electricians, machinists, etc
Some states want recidivism (Score:3)
Re:Some states want recidivism (Score:4, Interesting)
I wasn't aware of some of those details, but you're dead right. There is a zero probability that any for-profit prison would not want to maximize recidivism.
And the government-run ones... Add county jails into this picture. In 2004, the Brevard Co., FL jail was horrid (someone very close to me was in it). Lunch? Green baloney. Anyone could claim that someone should be on suicide watch, and they were *not* isolated, but put in glass-walled cells, zero privacy, *with* bright lights on 24/x, and the a/c cranked up, and one thin blanket. Oh, and no glasses. Their GED program? Only if there would be enough people to take it, and in a jail, it was in for a while and out. Most of the women were in for prostitution, of course, and a high percentage were functionally illiterate. And the cost of phone calls meant some had little outside contact week-to-week.
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The problem was never AI (Score:2)
They literally solved the problem and then added AI to the mix.
Recidivism rates (Score:3)
US: 66% (Wall Street's numbers aren't those found in official statistics)
UK: 28.9%
Holland: 23%
Norway: 16%
China: 6%
US' conclusion: The rate is a complete mystery, we've no idea how to decrease it, let's do more of what we're currently doing differently to everyone else.
There is a slight possibility this may be flawed.
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All they need is to fully implement Monday Night Rehabilitation. Then the recidivism rate will drop to zero.
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And the number of false convictions (roughly 25% of those convicted in the US) doesn't cause a problem for you?
Then you're part of the problem.
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Um you do realise that Monday Night Rehabilitation (i.e. executing people with monster trucks in a TV spectacle with the president often in attendance) was a satire based on the words people use with the current justice system, i.e. "rehabilitation" and how it actually treats people.
I have to ask did you actually think I was literally proposing taking something from idiocracy and implementing it in real life?
Guaranteed income & nutrition reduces recidivi (Score:2)
"Guaranteed income helps people leaving jail and prison, and that helps everyone"
https://www.prisonpolicy.org/b... [prisonpolicy.org]
"Upon coming home from prison, people face the same â" and rising â" costs of living as the rest of us. But they have to bear additional costs imposed by the criminal legal system as well, all while navigating additional and unique barriers to employment. The resulting financial insecurity makes it harder to succeed at reentry. Cash assistance (often called â
Better options (Score:2)
"America's state prison systems need ways "to keep people from returning to prison," Part of the problem comes in the form of filing cabinets, manila folders and legacy digital databases. In other words, records for a single prisoner might be kept in a dozen places.. ...nonprofit Recidiviz, whose computer systems bring together prisoner data from its disparate sources into digital dashboards. From there, corrections staff can see information â" such as court records and notes from parole-board hearings
There are some people (Score:2)
in the United States that would rather implement a 3 strikes you're executed policy. Draconian law anyone? That's their solution to Recidivism. Unfortunately prison in the United States is mostly used for punishment rather than rehabilitation.
The state prison systems (looking at you southern states) are especially notorious in the ways they inhumanly treat the incarcerated.
Also, the prison guards don't do anything to suppress gang behavior. They just don't give a damn.
They shackle prisoners at the hands,
opportunities (Score:2)
People need opportunities. When you get out of jail/prison your job options are very limited. If you cant get one of those crap jobs, or start your own business, then crime is looking pretty good.
You can exclude people from work but they still need to survive.
Reducing recidivism is about opportunities to succeed without crime.
Try.. (Score:2)
Put efforts into rehabilitation rather than being highly punitive
You currently have the system you want
What a crock... (Score:2)
As of former DSO and prison guard I can say with some authority, it isn't record keeping that causes recidivism. More likely is lack of opportunity, lack of education, and a severe sense of being indoctrinated in the system. Many of these guys don't KNOW how to act on their own and without supervision they go off the rails. I don't know how you categorize a generally likeable person who makes the worst possible choices in life, frequently, other than convict.
"Try the European system of treating criminals as
When holding a hammer, everthing looks like a nail (Score:2)
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This also doesn't so much apply to the obvious thing, private prisons (although those are an issue they really are a small percentage of prisons in America) but moreso what nobody likes to say it's the funding ("profit") of law enforcement. Your local PD, sheriffs office and state police all are incentivized to arrest and incarcerate as much as possible and maintain their sky high funding levels.
My town just increased property taxes this year and over half of those funds ($230 million) is going to law enfo
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I'm not sure it really applies to law enforcement. There's never going to be a shortage of work there.
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amen, brother!
Americans can't solve any problems and the place is stuck in a doom spiral. It's like trying to convince a believer their religion is just a mythology inherited from their upbringing not much different than flat-earthers of the past ( present ones bring up a whole another example of fools.)
The USA always was #1 for cults for a reason!
Besides lacking critical thinking and an anti-intellectual culture (largely countered by educated immigrants but that no longer the case) the culture is all about
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Indeed. I think one reason is because the US is missing a really big domestic catastrophe where they cannot conveniently blame "somebody else" for it. Or at least where that blame-shifting is obvious enough that most people see it for what it is. Hence there is this completely irrational and disconnected feeling of superiority and being invulnerable. For most people, humility only comes from an experience of abject failure. For some, it never comes. But humility is critical for seeing reality, so if you do
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No. You eventually have to lock up (or kill) people for the tiniest infractions. This makes sure your economy goes to hell. (Ooooops....)
See, for example, the theocracies. Which is essentially what you are arguing for.
Re:Kill The Greedy Rich (Score:4, Insightful)