Using Data Technology To Reform The Criminal Justice System

I came across this article on TechCrunch earlier today and it could not have been more on the money. DJ Patil, the Chief Data Scientist at the White House, talks at length about the various initiatives underway and how his team is working relentlessly with data to help reform the justice system. This is a major watershed moment for legal technology and our federal government.

I will talk a lot about how our government’s policies and strategy are directly related to the pace of innovation in our technology sector. Usually it is because I think the government is stifling innovation, or is completely ignorant of ways they could transform public policies. This time, I’m happy to say they’re doing exactly the right thing in the right way.

The “structural bias” argument about policing is the first thing to consider. We hear resounding affirmations from people of color who have been profiled or improperly treated. I tend to ascribe to the saying, “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” so I do believe that these biased aggressions are happening again and again. The really important question though is finding exactly where, when, and who are the main perpetrators of these incidents, and what are the predictive variables for their occurrence? These are the smart questions we need to ask, and they can only be answered by using big data. There’s really no way to flat out deny structural bias in policing. It’s like a person coming to the hospital and begging to be helped because they are dying from some internal illness, but they cannot stop it without medical help. But when the patient comes to the doctor and is most in need, the doctor just says, “Well your whole body is doing alright, but there’s no way for me to be certain if you do have some acute illness. I can see you have some symptoms but those could be from a multitude of causes…” Collaborative data analysis by police and related law enforcement agencies is like doing a full medical exam on the sick patient, trusting they do have an illness, and finding the exact pathogens and their cause to wipe them out with a targeted medicine.

There are so many other examples of where big data analysis could absolutely shatter stagnancy, inefficiency, and waste in the government. Budgets, healthcare, entitlement spending, military expenses, transportation, national security… the list goes on and on. Many of these ideas have been tried, but those that haven’t should be next on the list for DJ Patil and his White House technologist crew.