Thread by @equalityAlec

Have you ever heard about the government using “risk assessment” algorithms? This is a thread about racism, and it will tell you a lot about how our legal system works that you didn't know. (1)

Across the country, you can be separated from your children or kept in a jail cell based on a series of interview questions about your friendships, romantic relationship history, and whether you live in a poor or Black neighborhood. How? (2)

Government bureaucrats have formulas called “risk assessment algorithms” that use interview questions about your background to predict how they say you’ll act in the future. (3)

In Texas, for example, every person considered for probation instead of prison is given an interview. You are given more “risk” points if you tell the interviewer any of the following: (4)

-you have “trouble paying bills”
-you are “under employed” (meaning you don’t have work that pays you more than 30 hours/week)
-there are a lot of police in your neighborhood (5)

You score yet more points if:

-you have no “stable residence”
-you have *ever* used recreational drugs
-you admit that you have friends who have ever used drugs (6)

It gets worse. Jim Crow meets Kafka meets Orwell meets dungeon-like Texas jails:

- “expresses concern for friends and family.” (1 pt)
-“does not express concern for others” (2 pts)

You are risky if you worry about loved ones, and more risky if you don’t worry about them! (7)

It gets worse. You are riskier if you:

-“express concern about controlling events”
-have “difficult time coping with day to day stress”

So, you are more likely to be caged, separated from children, or surveilled by the government if you are like everyone else in the world. (8)

It gets worse. You score more “risk” points if you agree with the statement “Do unto others before they do unto you.” This would be a joke if it didn’t destroy lives. (9)

It gets worse. The interview walks through every aspect of your thoughts and daily life, including scoring points for intimate friendship answers, sexual details with partners, prior therapy sessions, etc… (10)

The social engineering gets worse. You score points if

--50% of your time is “unstructured.” (11)

Having less than most of one’s time “unstructured” could be considered one of the great joys of life. But if you’re poor and targeted by police, your very experience of free time not managed by employer or government is reason to cage you. (12)

These mathematical formulas also bake in the racial discrimination of the system, calling you more risky if you have past school suspensions or if cops chose to arrest you in the past. They launder prior systemic racism with a veneer of “science.” (13) law.nyu.edu/sites/default/…

Across the country, stuff like this is offered as a “reform” to determine how long prison sentences are, whether people get parole, whether people are caged prior to trial, and whether child welfare agencies let people keep their kids. (14) wired.com/story/excerpt-…

Think about what it says about who is in charge of our legal system that these are the “reforms” that they use to determine things like who is caged and who is separated from their children. (15)

People in poverty are charged $100 by Texas for the government using the algorithm against them. We pay for our own oppression. (end)