Welcome To The Technological Incarceration Project, Where Prison Walls Are Replaced By Sensors, Algorithms, And AI
from the shocking-new-approach dept
At heart, a prison is a place where freedom is taken away, and inmates are constrained in what they can do. Does that mean a prison has to consist of a special building with bars and prison guards? How about turning the home of a convicted criminal into a kind of virtual prison, where they are limited in their actions? That's what Dan Hunter, dean of Swinburne University's Law School in Melbourne, suggests, reported here by Australian Broadcast News:
Called the Technological Incarceration Project, the idea is to make not so much an internet of things as an internet of incarceration.
Professor Hunter's team is researching an advanced form of home detention, using artificial intelligence, machine-learning algorithms and lightweight electronic sensors to monitor convicted offenders on a 24-hour basis.
The idea is to go beyond today's electronic tagging systems, which provide a relatively crude and sometimes circumventable form of surveillance, to one that is pervasive, intelligent -- and shockingly painful:
Under his team's proposal, offenders would be fitted with an electronic bracelet or anklet capable of delivering an incapacitating shock if an algorithm detects that a new crime or violation is about to be committed.
That assessment would be made by a combination of biometric factors, such as voice recognition and facial analysis.
Leaving aside the obvious and important issue of how reliable the algorithms would be in judging when a violation was about to take place, there are a couple of other aspects of this approach worth noting. One is that it shifts the costs of incarceration from the state to the offender, who ends up paying for his or her upkeep in the virtual prison. That would obviously appeal to those who are concerned about the mounting cost to taxpayers of running expensive prisons. The virtual prison would also allow offenders to remain with their family, and thus offers the hope that they might be re-integrated into society more easily than when isolated in an unnatural prison setting. Irrespective of any possible financial benefits, that has to be a good reason to explore the option further.
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Filed Under: internet of things, prison
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It's not if, it's when
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* Failing to pay for the electronic monitoring is a crime.
* Failing to report for parole or hearings is a crime.
* Dying while monitored is a crime
* Driving over the speed limit is a crime.
So if you're rushing to your parole officer to explain why you haven't been able to pay for your electronic monitoring, the induced spasms for the speed limit violation result in the failure to report and maybe the death.
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Re: Re:
>* Failing to pay for the electronic monitoring is a crime.
>* Failing to report for parole or hearings is a crime.
>* Dying while monitored is a crime
>* Driving over the speed limit is a crime.
Of course, the majority of repeat offenders - those doing life on the installment plan - have no money. So basically, this put the offender in the position of having to get his girlfriend or family to support him - pay for food and lodging. Note too with super-cheap "incarceration" comes the temptation to over-sentence. So... will failure to charge your ankle bracelet become a punishable offense? Whose fault is technical failure? How do these things work in the bath, or is hygiene optional now?
Real incarceration is a much better idea because it makes the state appreciate the burden it is taking on by trying to control someone longer-term. I suspect this option just becomes a "get out of jail free" card for the independently wealthy - few of whom go to jail nowadays anyway.
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No it won't for the reason you already stated:
They, the government, want out of that arrangement. If they can get away with throwing someone into isolation and forget about them with absolutely no consequence, and no cost, then they can do as they please with criminal sentencing. No one will care if they are not paying for it. (Well, no one that matters anyway.) Given this ability, they will go nuts with increasing the length of prison sentences for easy brownie points with their voters for "being tough on crime". More injustices will be committed, (Hell, the summary already mentions potentially lethal electric shocks as an "enforcement" mechanism. How that doesn't violate the cruel and unusual torture clause is beyond me. (Of course, they don't care about that....)) and it still won't change the recidivism rate. (Worse, it may make it worse.)
Nevermind that you can bet your ass this tech will be used outside of the criminal realm. Person of Interest's Samaritan would be proud.
All I can say here is: BOHICA.
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They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
Sooner or later, laws will be passed restricting the freedoms of average citizens in their own homes. No smoking in homes with children comes to mind as an obvious example for a vector of attack. There are endless others, I'm sure.
And, of course, the rich and powerful, the "some are more equal" crowd, and the Deep State will have exemptions and special treatment. Something like this will make Orwell look like an optimist.
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Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
Umm, many laws already apply to people in their homes. Want to kill somebody "in your own home"? Sorry, it's still illegal.
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Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
As per usual, generalities tend to leave holes to be exploited. If someone is in my home and I've asked them to leave and they then make a credible attempt on my life, I'm completely within my rights to defend myself with deadly force here in Michigan. In some states (Texas comes to mind first here) just them refusing to leave after being asked to do so gives one the right to use deadly force.
Be careful where you are when you make your statement, especially if you decide to live by it. Otherwise, you may not live long. I always try to know the limits of self-defense law in places that I plan to visit, it just seems like a good way to avoid the potential of injury to myself on one side and potential jail time on the other.
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Re: Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
Citation needed.
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Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
Do us a favor and slit your own throat, so we don't have to hunt your worthless state worshiping ass down.
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Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
Even in self defense? ... Thats perverse.
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Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
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Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
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Re: Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
I thought it was the pitch forks.
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Re: Re: Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
Another is when they act and react to current events by supporting a plan that helps in the short term but has major ramifications in the long term. For example not paying money into pensions because they want to fund something else while assuming it won't negatively affect retirees in the future because that is for some other politician to deal with.
Then there is another option by politicians to go full Orwellian on their constituents to keep them in line. To help out with that politicians will join up with well funded special interest groups to control the populous.
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Re: They won't stop with the homes of those convicted of crimes.
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And the monitoring AI "thinks"...
Yeah. No way to trick this system, and no way it would be expanded more and more to "help" "maladjusted" citizens.
Prisons should be ugly and expensive. That way, the problem of a huge prison population can't be hidden in plain sight.
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Hello pre-crime
Under his team's proposal, offenders would be fitted with an electronic bracelet or anklet capable of delivering an incapacitating shock if an algorithm detects that a new crime or violation is about to be committed.
Among the problems with this idea this part in particular stuck out for me. An incapacitating shock when a 'crime or violation' is about to be committed? Even assuming a 100% accuracy rate(and good luck demonstrating that) that's still punishing someone for what they will/might do in the future, rather than what they are/have done, and that I most certainly do not agree with.
If those putting forth the proposal want to demonstrate the accuracy of such a system then I welcome them to wear such devices, fully active, themselves for several years to do so. It likely won't change my position, but it would show conviction and a willingness to put themselves through at least some of what they are proposing for others.
Those who have been found guilty of crimes and incarcerated have less freedoms than those that have not, but taking it this far seems to be going to extremes when the focus could be solving things like re-integration into society in less intrusive/excessive ways.
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Re: Hello pre-crime
The question of who has legal liability within this system must also be raised. If a person living under this monitoring dies because of that shock, who would carry the weight of liability for that person’s death?
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Re: Re: Hello pre-crime
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Re: Hello pre-crime
How does that work? wifi? ... bluetooth? - LOL
How do they intend to stop someone from wrapping the damned thing with tin foil?
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Re: Re: Hello pre-crime
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System of a Down
Minor drug offenders fill your prisons, you don't even flinch
All our taxes paying for your wars against the new non-rich
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What could possibly go wrong?
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The Word For Today Is ...
... “Panopticon”.
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Re: The Word For Today Is ...
For the whole family!
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The 'incapacitating shock' bit offends and infuriates me.
Home detention is fine. AI to preemptively predict if a crime is going to be committed could be great in the right hands. But having a machine automatically brutalise someone on suspicion that they're about to commit a crime? Angers me enough to want to kill this Dan Hunter.
Maybe you should rewrite this article a little bit, Glyn. Do more to promote the home detention and crime prevention bits, denounce the potentially-lethal-electric-shock part...and, hmm, most crime is committed by low-income or no-income groups, right? Is transferring the costs of imprisonment to them really going to be beneficial to their rehabilitation?
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Re: The 'incapacitating shock' bit offends and infuriates me.
Cruel.
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Re: Re: The 'incapacitating shock' bit offends and infuriates me.
America technological incarceration would have its own protocols.
Alexa: Executing.
Alexa: You said "Aarrgh." Ordering a pirate costume using your default credit card!"
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Re: The 'incapacitating shock' bit offends and infuriates me.
It depends.
If you are talking about quantity of reported instances, I would believe this to be true given adequate supporting data.
But ....
If measured in damage done to society, then no. The amount of damage done by Wall street greed barons is astronomically huge compared to the petty crimes that make up the large number you refer to.
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Oh good grief!
I thought we were over lie detectors as a working concept.
At any rate, the problem is that thinking about doing something activates the same brain areas as actually doing it, and the whole point of sentences is to get people thinking about what they are doing and then decide not doing it again.
This is naive and stupid on so many levels that the only kind of government considering it is the kind of government that imagines torture to be effective and desirable.
It's the "it has sort of a scientific ring to it and someone is willing to take money for doing it, so there is no reason to engage conscience" idiocy that Americans love so much to see in action.
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If the idea is to move away from brick and mortar prisons then I find the idea to be counter-intuitive on it's face because not everyone can afford such a "luxury" and considering most crimes are done by people of low-income it just reinforces a self-fulfilling cycle except now they're scrambling to pay for the equipment IN ADDITION to trying to feed their family.
Then there the potentially lethal shock that is based on what an algorithm and AI THINKS is going to happen. Hello thought-crime at best and too scared to do anything out of fear it'll generate a false positive.
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I saw this in a few movies
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Deja Vu
Pretty sure I saw this in a pre-history documentary starring Christopher Lambert:
Fortress
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Re: Deja Vu
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Re: Deja Vu
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But we don't. Not even close. So it sounds more like slavery than justice. In fact it sounds worse than slavery.
Very disapointing article.
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Shoot the messenger
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The technology on which this would rely...
Only a credulous idiot would think that today's AI was even remotely close to being able to tell when a real crime was being committed, let alone when one was about to be. That would require at least human-level AI, and probably better than human.
Yes, there's stuff that can watch parking garage video and detect behavior that's often characteristic of people trying to break into cars... and then alert an actual person to watch that camera. No, there is nothing that can tell with any certainty when somebody is ACTUALLY trying to break into cars.
And that is a million times easier than somehow detecting any possible kind of pre-crime that may have been dreamed up by somebody with weeks to plan it.
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Re: The technology on which this would rely...
There is no AI. It is 100% marketing buzzword hype to try to sell "solutions" to the ignorant.
Or in this case, a cynical, amoral effort to sell garbage to the vicious and stupid.
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Re: The technology on which this would rely...
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Response to: Rekrul on Aug 19th, 2017 @ 6:15am
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Re: Response to: Rekrul on Aug 19th, 2017 @ 6:15am
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Why wait for a crime
This will ensure compliance with State values and ideals.
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Leave it to corporate agents like Masnick and Moody to pull the slow burn towards state worship. I told you guys what these Jewstards were up to a long long time ago, but you dipshits just don't listen.
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What the heck, Glyn??? This program is not a good idea. Exploring this 'option' doesn't help anybody more than basic prison reform would.
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(Same AC here, following up.) Honestly, I think that this is more a horrible, horrible idea. And as others mentioned, it's got horrible Condtitutional implications.
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That's quite a thing to leave aside. But OK, let's leave that aside and assume they are, somehow, reliable.
We still have many issues. There are fifth amendment due process implications when you start punishing people before the crime. There are also potential issues with fourth amendment seizure requirements (I think an electric shock is essentially "seizing" someone.) An algorithm is now *automatically* probable cause for a seizure, with no review and nobody to take in into context? Arguably, there's also eighth amendment "cruel and unusual punishment" concerns; that sounds like a rather severe shock.
Not to mention the fourth amendment implications for the rest of the family, when there are cameras and microphones in their home 24/7. (This article doesn't use the words "camera" or "microphone", instead using the euphemism "lightweight electronic sensors". But if it's doing "voice recognition and facial analysis", then that pretty much means cameras and microphones, of sufficient quality to do that.)
Forcing people to pay for it means a two-tiered justice system. You can get released from prison, but only if you can pay us?
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Yeah, seriously.
Who are you and what have you done with the real Glyn Moody?
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A grim future indeed
Does this "system" signal the final demise of the notion of "Innocent Until Proven Guilty", in America?
After all, if the punishment is administered BEFORE the crime is committed - preventing the victim from actually "doing the crime", just exactly what was the punishment administered for, since no crime was committed??
Is "Thinking about committing a crime" to become an actual crime, once this sort of system becomes reality? If not, how does Authority explain its "right" to administer punishment upon someone who has NOT committed a crime?
This sounds a lot more like News From Russia, or Baghdad than America. Then again, this is now a Trumped-Up America, so I guess there's not really that much difference anymore.
Sieg Heil Y'all.
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