Technology
Why is facial recognition, currently used by law enforcement, called a "perpetual lineup"?
Law enforcement is using databases, such as driver's licenses, to search for individuals' identities from images or video footage. This means we are all in a lineup that we can't get out of.
Why is Shaken Baby Syndrome/Abusive Head Trauma a challenging medical diagnosis to study?
Did stop-and-frisk reduce crime in NYC, as Rudy Giuliani claimed?
We cannot tell if there was a causal connection, but we do know that crime fell during that time period in cities that did not have broken windows policing (or stop-and-frisk). Also, stop-and-frisk was considered illegal.
Yes. The study by Danzinger et al. suggests that judges are harsher when they have not had a break/eaten in a while.
What was the type of evidence that led to the revolution in reforming forensic science?
DNA evidence highlighted serious problems in other forensic disciplines.
What does it mean when we say an algorithm in the criminal justice system is not fair in terms of race?
It has different error rates by race.
What happened to US violent and property crime rates in the past 60 years?
Rise from 1960-1990, fall from 1990 to today. But violent crime rates have been rising again in certain cities from 2019-today.
Describe the initial "broken windows" experiment and describe how this has become a policing tactic.
How many of the defendants sentenced to death in the US are actually innocent?
According to Gross et al. 2013, at least 4.1% of all defendants sentenced to death in the US in the modern era are innocent.
This is a conservative estimate of the proportion of false conviction among death sentences in the United States.
What has happened to the US prison population in the past 40 years and why?
Increase from 1980 to 2008 because of: Mandatory minimum sentencing, war on drugs, three strikes laws.
Decrease from 2008 to today: After decades of sharp growth, incarceration in the US has decreased, probably because of bipartisan support for reducing costs and policies (as the ones in Philadelphia) to decrease jail populations.
What point did Lum et al. 2016 make about using PredPol to predict where crimes will happen in the future?
They found that there is sampling bias in what crimes the police observe, and thus the algorithm produces predictions that are biased. They use an alternative dataset to generate realistic drug use estimates over the entire area studied.
Name one theory for why crime decreased in recent years, and give a reason why we think this can be a good explanation.
Lead exposure decreased when gasoline became unleaded, so individuals became less violent. This happened internationally.
Do police kill more Black or white individuals every year? How do we know?
More white individuals are killed annually by the police.
However, if you are Black, you have a higher chance of being killed by police in the US.
We know this from informally collected data, such as the dataset collected by the Washington Post.
Why are we given the Miranda warnings?
Note: These are the Miranda warnings: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present now and during any future questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you at no cost."
Miranda rights: the U.S. Constitutional bases for them are in the Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Fifth Amendment dealing with a person’s right against self-incrimination, which applies not only when they’re on the witness stand in court but in any context. Citizens have the right not to speak to the police and say things that might incriminate themselves. And also the Sixth Amendment right to have counsel when they are under arrest, when they are suspected of a crime; the Sixth Amendment right to have protection of counsel. So that’s essentially where the Miranda Warnings and the Miranda rights originate. But the concept of the Miranda Warning specifically really took root in the 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case of Miranda v. Arizona, in which the U.S. Supreme Court basically said that for those rights to be meaningful, a suspect has to be aware of them.
What is more expensive, a death penalty case or life in prison?
Death penalty.
In Texas, a death penalty case costs an average of $2.3 million, about three times the cost of imprisoning someone in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years. (Dallas Morning News, March 8, 1992).
What are the three factors that we need to be careful about when designing an algorithm in CJ? Did Northpointe's algorithm have these?
Fairness, accountability, and transparency.
How do we know that there is underreporting of crime? Has underreporting increased or decreased recently?
NCVS self-reported data about whether victims reported crimes to the police. Baumer's study suggests that it has been decreasing.
Does hiring more police officers lead to more or less crime? And more or less incarceration?
Evan and Owens (2007) found that a 10% increase in police officers led to a 10% decrease in violent crime and a 3% decrease in property crime.
Kaplan and Chalfin (2019) found that investments in law enforcement are unlikely to increase state prison populations markedly and may even lead to a modest decrease in the number of state prisoners.
According to Ouss's research, why do people avoid attending their hearing in court?
They are not aware of the details of the hearing.
Name two policies that have been shown to reduce recidivism and two that have not.
CBT, Expanding DNA databases.
Ban the box, transitional jobs.
What was a surprising result that the Ariel and Sutherland (2016) experiment found about body worn cameras?
BWCs increased rate of assaults against officers wearing cameras.
Give three differences between UCR and NCVS.
- UCR is collected by the police, and then given to the FBI. NCVS is a survey of victims.
- UCR has information about homicides and NCVS does not.
- NCVS asks individuals about several incidents whereas UCR only has information about a single incident.
What did Bocar Ba (2018) find about what happens when it becomes costlier to file a complaint against a police officer? How did he do this?
He found that it decreased the number of complaints and increased police use of force. He studied this causally by using the fact that some complaint offices moved so it became harder for some citizens to file complaints.
What happens at an arraignment?
Arraignment is a formal reading of a criminal charging document in the presence of the defendant, to inform them of the charges against them. In response to arraignment, in some jurisdictions, the accused is expected to enter a plea; in other jurisdictions, no plea is required. Acceptable pleas vary among jurisdictions, but they generally include guilty, not guilty, and the peremptory pleas, or pleas in bar, setting out reasons why a trial cannot proceed. Pleas of nolo contendere ('no contest') and the Alford plea are allowed in some circumstances.
What policies helped inmates be less likely to test positive for illicit opioids after their release from prison?
Methadone treatment and counseling in prison proved better than just counseling or counseling + referral to a treatment center.