A Computerized Justice System
Posted on: June 8, 2012 - 12:16pm
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A Computerized Justice System
I recently made an aside on another forum about how stupid jury's generally seem to be and how this could be fixed by computerizing the justice system (taking out the human element). Now I'm being met with derision on how impossible the task is and how it couldn't possibly utilize ethics.
I'm trying to research it online and not finding much so I'm hoping that some of the more knowledgeable RR members could either point me in the right direction or add to the derision.
Either way, have a god-free day.
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Sorry to add to the derision, because I agree the average jury isn't necessarily qualified to judge circumstances surrounding an incident, but a computer system designed to replace them could not do better, and would likely do worse.
First, the programming problem. To have a computer do this, it'd have to be programmed by people, the very element under debate for being qualified to the task in the first place.
Secondly are the limitations of computing. A computer cannot think like we can. It can't contrast and compare like us, it can't weigh factors against other factors. It can only solve equations. Equations given it by people. Bringing us back to the first problem.
The third problem that comes to mind is morality. It changes. Generation by generation. The US is somewhat infamous for having dozens of ridiculous and unenforced laws on its books stemming from a different time. I doubt the US is the only nation with this problem. If brought to court in front of a judge & jury, the case would be dismissed.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Not so with the computer, who throws a woman into jail for wearing white after labour day (or however that stupid custom worked) because a law from 1800 is still technically in force today.
I could accept a stage addition to the justice system where a computer stands as an additional barrier to unjustified incarceration, but never a system that gives a computer all the say.
In the end, it must be people who level the verdict.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Yes, I have a hard time imaging a computer handling justice. I would have to hear exactly how it would do it. Its one thing to have a computer on Jeopardy which there is one answer for, but to pick up the subtleties of the meeting out justice just is beyond me.
I have heard that we might do better if we had professional juries. People somewhat trained in law and how to weigh evidence. Vastest, got any thoughts on that?
Religion Kills !!!
Numbers 31:17-18 - Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.
http://jesus-needs-money.blogspot.com/
It'd certainly help. Though honestly, I think those are skills that should be taught to all. It never ceases to amaze me how often someone will accept the most bizarre evidence for their conclusions.
Regardless, at the moment the only actual requirements to be a juror, to my knowledge, are residence in the area and a lack of knowledge or bias of any kind in the case in question. Jurors are expected to ignore everything that hasn't been approved by the judge. Everything in court is implied to be admissible, unless otherwise noted by the judge, and everything else is irrelevant. Expert witnesses are supposed to be regarded as the top tier of available information in a field, despite the fact that said experts are not necessarily reliable, and may themselves be biased.
But one of the core flaws is a jury ignoring its responsibility. For better or worse, they must find innocent for ANY case in which there is ANY reasonable doubt, and that is rarely the way it goes from where I'm watching.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
The issue is that we currently can't produce an ethics-based process that fairly interprets 'justice'.
I am continuing on my research to see if other science-based/driven people with far more competency than me are any closer to what I see as a solution to human error.
I appreciate the feedback, it certainly tempers my enthusiatic pursuit of a judicial overlord.
It doesn't help that law enforcement is probably about 80 years ahead of the justice system. Police forces have jumped on the science bandwagon and have become ridiculously difficult to evade as a result. Commit any planned crime a hundred years ago and you had about a 70% chance of getting away with it. 500 years ago and you had about 95% chance of getting away with it. Today you're lucky to have a 10% chance of getting away with anything serious, and maybe 50% chance for mediocre crimes that only a few people care about.
This of course refers to crimes that were investigated, not witnessed by a dozen people. Though even witness testimony isn't particularly reliable.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
This is completely false. Only 66.6% of murders lead to an arrest or are otherwise cleared in the US. http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/offenses/clearances/index.html substantially lower than it used to be.
Canada has shown a similar decline since the 60's but appears to still have a higher clearance rate than the US http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11647-eng.htm
And these statistics only mean that someone was arrested or the perpetrator is known. It doesn't mean that anyone was actually convicted.
As to the OP, I think it is an incredibly bad idea to leave justice up to computers or "professional" jurors. The whole point of our jury by peers system is to prevent political powers from having great influence over trials and convictions. The system is hardly perfect and could probably be improved with a few changes, but overall it provides defendants ample opportunity to get a fair trial in most cases.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
If those don't have conviction rates and absolute proofs of commission of crime then they are not evidence against my statement. Good luck proving the guilt of all those convicts.
An arrest or conviction does in no way guarantee the criminal was apprehended, and the further back you go the higher the rate of false conviction.
You're usually at least somewhat right when you make such bold proclamations, but this time you're completely and totally wrong.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
In my country we don't have a jury. There is one judge and two associate justices or a senate of judges. We should have less cases, in my country we don't sue each other for sport or for drying our pets in microwave oven, that's possible only in America. It doesn't help anyway, all the courts are over their head in cases. But putting a jury on top of that would only delay the process even more. I think it would help to decrease the number of possible repeals or make their conditions more strict.
The point is, other countries do no more badly without the jury. In fact, I'd say here the jury is known from English lessons, singing contests and American movies portraying the jury as always wrong or prejudiced. I say, get rid of the jury and if necessary give the judge two civilians as associate justices who can outvote him if necessary and be done with it.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
This isn't turning into the science-based discussion I'd hoped for.
Still, I appreciate the comments. I'm also not going to give up. I'm currently trying to reprogram a Commodore 64 to judge and exectue mice.
If people wanted more accurate verdicts then there wouldn't be jury trials, the decisions would be made by experts. Trial by jury favors the accused and it is one of the most hard fought victories for average people in western society; to be judge by people of your same legal status. Even if it were possible to make machines that render trial verdicts no one would want that.
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
Maybe you could program your computer to be a god that would judge people according to their own religion/bible. Also make the god judge itself according to the same laws and also the laws of nature. You could also have different god's judge each other and members of the other religions.
If you could program the computer to teach itself I'm sure the end result would be the god defaulting to atheism. I'm sure you have seen "war games" where joshua plays tic-tac-toe and global thermo-nuclear war.
"...but truth is a point of view, and so it is changeable. And to rule by fettering the mind through fear of punishment in another world is just as base as to use force." -Hypatia
?!?! Wtf, I was arguing against your claim that
Since almost 1/3 of murder investigations never even lead to an arrest you obviously have a much higher than 10% chance of getting away with it. Add in that many arrests never lead to a conviction or lead to only a conviction on a lower charge and that just proves my point. I didn't make any "bold proclamation" I simply provided a link to evidence that your bold proclamation was absurd.
If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X
Clearly you have no interest in seeing how much of a fool you're making of yourself, ignoring the context I used, so have fun with that.
Say something relevant and I'll respond. Otherwise I'm done wasting my time.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
A computer aided judge system could make judgements cheaper, if the judgement is checked by humans later. My home country has very high court prices and has zero tolerance. So it does not count where you made the mistake. Currently if someone claim that there were 4 meters between his/her car and the other car before someone crashed into him and later the police prove that there were 5 meters there, he/she will get prison for misleading the police, if he/she does not have a defender.
A computer aided judge system has to be tolerant. The computer aided judge system has to know the meaning of the words. If it only matches words, logic chain can be built so, that the inner steps has no sense and the result is surprising.
My home country has no jury, so no sentence is double checked by jury or other courts. First is starts at second level and ends at first level.
There is no sports sue by default because some of the people disclaimed his/her human and constitutional rights at universities.
At some universities where people will work in governmental offices, it is not allowed for them to disclaim human and constitutional rights at universities. In this case there are so called microwave oven type of sues: if he/she get puncture with your car he/she first sue the tire factory. Actually he/she are not allowed to do anything because he/she would get prison for a wheel change. Programmers sue the hardware factory if something is hard to do.
Almost impossible.
It has to use an intelligent dictionary interfaced to an advanced version of Prolog. But it has to be made intelligent to prevent nonsense decisions for example: chain of logically correct but unusual decisions, transitions that has nothing to do with the case.