

Can We Reduce Bias in Criminal Justice? - alwaysmetara
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_we_reduce_bias_in_criminal_justice

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j_m_b
If personal bias plays a part in increasing the amount of arrests and
prosecutions for a certain subpopulation, then by definition reducing the
domain of law enforcement reduces the impact of personal bias. Prohibition of
substances, gambling and prostitution,the overcriminilization of our society,
"zero-tolerance" policies, and increasing regulatory oversight of every facet
of our lives have had the net result that the personal biases of government
officials have become insufferable to those most affected by it. I just hope
that the conversation shifts away from "Who should be in charge?" to "Should
we have so many people in charge?".

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jquery
Isn't "unconscious bias" merely humans using their instinctual bayesian
reasoning systems as priors? I don't see how it's possible to eliminate that,
nor that the outcome would necessarily be desirable. Educating people that
there are certain biases they shouldn't bring into the courtroom is a proposed
solution, but I don't think it gets us anywhere closer to the platonic ideal
of objective justice. It just mucks with the bayesian priors in a way that
favored activists desire.

~~~
hackuser
> Isn't "unconscious bias" merely humans using their instinctual bayesian
> reasoning systems as priors?

No, it's just tribal instincts against the 'other'; no prior experience is
necessary; people will kill people from groups they have no expereince with
because they are different. Consider homophobia: Is it because the attackers
have experience being assaulted by gays? What about violence against women?
(In fact, I think reality may be reverse of your theory: The same people are
victimized over and over; the weak are abused by the powerful.)

The solution is conceptually simple: Teach people to see the other groups as
'one of us'. It does happen over the long run; I read research that within a
few generations, for example, new immigrant groups mostly inter-marry with
others (arguably blacks became the equivalent of new immigrants when they
finally had full legal rights in the 1960s, and racial intermarriage now is
growing quickly). Consider Protestants and Catholics, who used to riot against
each other. 55 years ago, a Catholic winning the Presidency was a big deal.
Now nobody cares or notices; a Catholic marrying a Protestant is completely
unremarkable.

Rather than arbitrarily causing generations of suffering, we can learn to do
better now.

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jquery
> Teach people to see the other groups as 'one of us'.

You're thinking in very surface terms and minimizing the argument of the
opposition. What if the group values are utterly alien to the other group? For
example, are people to be taught that the Crips gang is 'one of us.'? Or Neo-
Nazis are 'one of us.'?

~~~
hackuser
> What if the group values are utterly alien to the other group? For example,
> are people to be taught that the Crips gang is 'one of us.'? Or Neo-Nazis
> are 'one of us.'?

Yes, and I think that's a great example. What enables people like Neo-Nazis to
do horrible things to others is to first think of their victims as alien (to
"objectify" them). This is well-known and long has been used by leaders that
want to promote these horrible things; the original Nazis and the Hutus (just
naming two off the top of my head) before their respective genocides, ran
public media campaigns conditioning the public to objectify and despise
Jewish/Tutsi people. In a very different context, soldiers often objectify
their enemies as gooks, ragheads, etc. (again, it's a psychological necessity
before a human does horrible things to others). You can see the same thing all
the time in less dangerous situations, for example in how many male abusers
talk about women.

It's important to see that the Nazis aren't 'utterly alien', but normal humans
like you and me (a very well-regarded, well-known book on this issue is Hannah
Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"). If we
don't understand the reality of how people do bad things, we won't be able to
prevent them. And the reality is that we all are prone to the same thinking
and mistakes (though on a much smaller, less damaging scale, hopefully!). It's
also important to realize that from the perspective of the perpetrators
(including Nazis), they are doing nothing wrong: The victim is indeed alien
and threatening (or otherwise deserving). Racists think that of blacks, for
example.

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benkuykendall
Unconscious racial bias comes up a lot in these issues. Yet I am at a loss to
see a mechanism by which we could even begin to remedy it. What steps could
proposed programs take?

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streptomycin
Lots of ideas come to mind. Probably all bad ideas, but ideas nonetheless:

* Judges and juries are only allowed to be the same race as the defendant.

* Increase/decrease the sentencing guidelines by X% for a certain race. 20 years max for a certain offense for Race Y, 15 years max for Race Z.

* Preferentially give better public defenders to people of certain races, or maybe just give them money to hire non-public defenders.

* Pick some small percentage of cases, say 5%. For people of Race Z, just let them go free 5% of the time. Don't even have a trial.

* Give nicer prison accommodations to people based on race. Similarly, make early release requirements less stringent for people based on race.

* For people of the privileged race, randomly arrest some innocent ones and try your best to pin the crime on them.

Like I said, these are all bad ideas, but they would counteract unconscious
racial bias.

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AnthonyMouse
The reason those are all bad ideas is that they're all attempting to treat the
symptom rather than the problem.

If the problem is that people are dumping alkali waste into the reservoir,
your suggestion is to ignore that and then dump in acid to even it out. Making
the pH neutral isn't the same thing as making the water clean.

We have to solve the underlying problem.

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streptomycin
Solve the underlying problem? Babies exhibit racial bias. We're going to need
some serious genetic engineering applied to the brain to solve the underlying
problem. I don't think that's happening any time soon.

Your solution is to ignore this and instead offer a platitude so you don't
have to think about an actual solution. I'm not saying I know the perfect
solution, but I'm pretty sure it's not a platitude.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
If you ask "why" up the chain enough times you eventually end up at some
immutable law of nature. But that's completely missing the point.

Fixing the cause rather than the symptom doesn't mean you have to go study
evolutionary biology. "Babies exhibit racial bias" doesn't inherently lead to
mass incarceration and murder. There is a whole system of causes between one
and the other.

And as for an actual solution, the top voted comment has already provided it.
You can't have bias in drug cases or police shootings if there are no drug
cases or police shootings. End the war on drugs and mandatory minimum
sentences. Demilitarize the police.

~~~
streptomycin
The problem we're discussing isn't that there are too many minorities
imprisoned for drug crimes. The problem is systemic disparate impact
throughout the entire criminal justice system.

Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the
same pattern in basically every type of crime. Legalizing drugs would reduce
the number of crimes, but not the racial bias.

You could just as easily "solve" the problem of racial bias by getting rid of
any class of crimes. Like, let's legalize speeding because more blacks are
pulled over for speeding than whites. Great. But the fundamental problem of
inequality still remains in every other area of the criminal justice system.

Also, how do mandatory minimum sentences lead to more bias? Wouldn't that lead
to less bias, since it removes biaased human judgement from part of the
process? Otherwise you'd probably see whites getting more lenient sentences
than they already do.

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AnthonyMouse
> Getting rid of drug crimes does nothing to solve that, because you see the
> same pattern in basically every type of crime.

No you don't. There is no epidemic of black men being convicted of insider
trading or wire fraud.

> Like, let's legalize speeding because more blacks are pulled over for
> speeding than whites.

You're saying that like it's a completely ridiculous suggestion, but there is
truth in it. Most traffic engineering manuals recommend that speed limits
normally be set at the 85th percentile traffic speed but most speed limits in
the US are set around 10MPH below that speed, resulting in widespread
lawbreaking. Having laws that most people violate but only some people are
punished for is not the rule of law and is exactly what facilitates racially
biased selective enforcement.

> Also, how do mandatory minimum sentences lead to more bias? Wouldn't that
> lead to less bias, since it removes biaased human judgement from part of the
> process?

Mandatory minimum sentences amplify the biases in who is arrested, charged and
convicted by increasing the average penalties. They also don't eliminate bias
in sentencing because a biased decision maker can still give black defendants
more than the mandatory minimum.

The only extent to which they could be said to reduce bias is in reducing the
possible range of penalties imposed, but the same range reduction could be
achieved by lowering the maximum rather than raising the minimum.

~~~
DanBC
> There is no epidemic of black men being convicted of insider trading or wire
> fraud.

I'm willing to bet that the few black men that are caught for this type of
crime are more likely to face court and have more severe punishment imposed.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
> I'm willing to bet that the few black men that are caught for this type of
> crime are more likely to face court and have more severe punishment imposed.

Even if that were true, constricting the scope of the problem to that sort of
rare case would be a thousand fold improvement from the status quo.

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mindslight
Oh cuil. The red herring of race takes hold, distracting people away from the
universal brokenness of a clock-punching judicial system that assumes everyone
is guilty, police that operate with impunity, and general lack of civil
recompense for victims of wrongful arrest and prosecution.

The system is far from the lofty ideal you were taught in civics class,
_regardless of one 's skin color_. Fixing the fundamental issues must be done
first in order to even make racial bias legible and to have an ideal to work
towards.

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classicsnoot
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

not being snarky; i think this one is a clear 'No.'

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Hytosys
This is a bullshit response. Did you not read the article? It offers a fair
share of proven optimism.

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classicsnoot
Wow, tiger. First off, i stand by my assessment. IMO if the bias were to be
stripped from the Justice System, that would mean firing literally everyone
and building a new one using computers and duct tape which, as every school
child knows, have no bias. Secondly, "fair share of proven optimism"? In my
head that translates to, "we think that maybe this might help a little"...
so... the answer is still 'No.'. Just my $0.02

~~~
Hytosys
>Secondly, "fair share of proven optimism"? In my head that translates to, "we
think that maybe this might help a little"...

That clearly translates to "no, I still haven't read the article."

~~~
classicsnoot
Ok. Having reread the entire thing twice (just for you) i can positively say
that i stand by my "no." The phrase "reduce subconscious bias" appears
multiple times with no explanation as to how that may actually work.

This is a classic case of top down initiative. The leaders can say whatever
they want; it is the foot soldiers that implement policy. As long as there is
an entrenched, aged constabulary educating the new recruits, the inherent
biases of thugs with badges will continue.

