Kerry Baker
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781847420008
- eISBN:
- 9781447304364
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781847420008.003.0003
- Subject:
- Social Work, Children and Families
This chapter explores how practitioners in the criminal justice agencies create complex decisions concerning risk within the current highly charged climate of media and political concern about public ...
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This chapter explores how practitioners in the criminal justice agencies create complex decisions concerning risk within the current highly charged climate of media and political concern about public protection. The aim of this chapter is not to look simply at the questions of procedure, but to develop a richer and deeper discussion on how practitioners make difficult judgements regarding risk. In this chapter, risk refers to the risk of harm that a young person may present to others although many of the issues would also be relevant to discussion of assessments of vulnerability or risk of self-harm and suicide. In this chapter, the focus is on the knowledge and the thinking processes of practitioners in making judgements about risk in relation to young offenders. In particular, the chapter examines how practitioners collect and analyse information on young offenders. It examines the assessment and prediction tools used by the practitioners in predicting offending behaviour and the risk/need assessment including the Asset and the Offender Assessment System (OASys) employed by the practitioners. The chapter also presents data from the Asset Risk of Serious Harm (ROSH) forms completed by practitioners from a national sample of Youth Offending Teams (YOTs).Less
This chapter explores how practitioners in the criminal justice agencies create complex decisions concerning risk within the current highly charged climate of media and political concern about public protection. The aim of this chapter is not to look simply at the questions of procedure, but to develop a richer and deeper discussion on how practitioners make difficult judgements regarding risk. In this chapter, risk refers to the risk of harm that a young person may present to others although many of the issues would also be relevant to discussion of assessments of vulnerability or risk of self-harm and suicide. In this chapter, the focus is on the knowledge and the thinking processes of practitioners in making judgements about risk in relation to young offenders. In particular, the chapter examines how practitioners collect and analyse information on young offenders. It examines the assessment and prediction tools used by the practitioners in predicting offending behaviour and the risk/need assessment including the Asset and the Offender Assessment System (OASys) employed by the practitioners. The chapter also presents data from the Asset Risk of Serious Harm (ROSH) forms completed by practitioners from a national sample of Youth Offending Teams (YOTs).
Bernard E. Harcourt
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226316130
- eISBN:
- 9780226315997
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226315997.001.0001
- Subject:
- Law, Constitutional and Administrative Law
From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And ...
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From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they are a more cost-effective way to fight crime. This book challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, the author demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, the author shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing, concluding that the presumption should be against prediction.Less
From random security checks at airports to the use of risk assessment in sentencing, actuarial methods are being used more than ever to determine whom law enforcement officials target and punish. And with the exception of racial profiling on our highways and streets, most people favor these methods because they believe they are a more cost-effective way to fight crime. This book challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, the author demonstrates, may in fact increase the overall amount of crime in society, depending on the relative responsiveness of the profiled populations to heightened security. They may also aggravate the difficulties that minorities already have obtaining work, education, and a better quality of life—thus perpetuating the pattern of criminal behavior. Ultimately, the author shows how the perceived success of actuarial methods has begun to distort our very conception of just punishment and to obscure alternate visions of social order. In place of the actuarial, he proposes instead a turn to randomization in punishment and policing, concluding that the presumption should be against prediction.
Nicholas Agar
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262014625
- eISBN:
- 9780262289122
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262014625.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter describes Kurzweil’s prediction tool, the law of accelerating returns, which applies to all technologies. Kurzweil combines several lucrative computing patents with a knack for ...
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This chapter describes Kurzweil’s prediction tool, the law of accelerating returns, which applies to all technologies. Kurzweil combines several lucrative computing patents with a knack for predicting developments in artificial intelligence. On his list of successful forecasts are a variety of military applications of computers, the dramatic expansion of the Internet, and the victories of computers over the world’s best human chess players. The chief interest here, however, is the role that the law of accelerating returns could play in furnishing the knowledge necessary to upload humans into machines. The chapter examines a number of obstacles on the road to uploading presented by science writer John Horgan. It concludes with an assessment of Kurzweil’s assertion that uploading ourselves into machines is compatible with our humanity, putting forth the view that it is possible for us to become nonbiological human beings.Less
This chapter describes Kurzweil’s prediction tool, the law of accelerating returns, which applies to all technologies. Kurzweil combines several lucrative computing patents with a knack for predicting developments in artificial intelligence. On his list of successful forecasts are a variety of military applications of computers, the dramatic expansion of the Internet, and the victories of computers over the world’s best human chess players. The chief interest here, however, is the role that the law of accelerating returns could play in furnishing the knowledge necessary to upload humans into machines. The chapter examines a number of obstacles on the road to uploading presented by science writer John Horgan. It concludes with an assessment of Kurzweil’s assertion that uploading ourselves into machines is compatible with our humanity, putting forth the view that it is possible for us to become nonbiological human beings.
