Did you know Dutch Police Use Flawed Algorithm to Predict Juvenile Offenses, Raising Ethical Concerns

 

According to Dutch investigative journalists at FTM, Dutch police are using algorithms that can tell if young people can become offenders in the future. The algorithm is unofficially named as Preselect Recidive evaluates young people between the ages of 12 and 18 to find out if they will reoffend after having contact with law enforcement. The general idea of this algorithm is similar to a 2002 film called Minorities Report. Just like in the movie, we cannot tell the future because the results of the algorithm also showed many incorrect scores. One in three children who had been evaluated were mislabeled and the system categorized them as future offenders.

Law enforcement using algorithms to assign youngsters a score is questionable. The children have to provide their age, personal and household police interactions and even information if they were a bystander witness in a crime. The algorithm gives scores on the basis of some similar factors and a child can be predicted as a future offender if any relative of his experiences any police custody a long time ago. The algorithm’s score also decides if a young person is going to have to face any penalities. Some Dutch experts say that the high number of false positives by the algorithm only give correct scores by chance.  

Some Dutch municipalities have made lists of young people who are likely to offend in the future or may be subjected to police attention. Some experts also said that Preselect Recidive can be helpful in determining who is going to offend in the future while other factors are at play too. There are some risks too like the selected young people getting more attention from law enforcement and being incriminated even if they are not prone to crime.

Other people who get low scores may become more prone to crime and could commit many offences. But as people with high scores would be more under police scrutiny, actual criminals would be overlooked. This will make matters worse because lawyers and offenders both didn't know that Dutch law enforcement had employed this method at all. The Dutch Ministry of Justice and Security said that they know that there are limitations in the algorithm but the system is good enough for now.