-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
index.html
340 lines (299 loc) · 17.1 KB
/
index.html
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no">
<title>Actuarial sentencing and Bias Behind Bars</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/reset.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/reveal.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/theme/white.css">
<!-- Theme used for syntax highlighted code -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="plugin/highlight/monokai.css">
<style>
.reveal h1 {
text-transform: none;
line-height: 1;
}
.reveal h2,
.reveal h3,
.reveal h4 {
text-transform: none;
}
.reveal ul {
margin: 0;
}
.reveal li {
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}
.reveal p {
margin: 0;
margin-bottom: 0.5em;
}
.reveal em {
opacity: 0.6;
}
.reveal .font-small {
font-size: 0.8em;
}
.w30 {
width: 30%;
display: inline-block;
}
p.heading {
font-size: 1.2em;
font-weight: bold;
}
p.small {
font-size: 0.5em;
}
p.color-request {
font-size: 0.9em;
}
span.text-red {
color: #e41a1c;
}
.text-blue {
color: #377eb8;
}
.text-green {
color: #4daf4a;
}
.text-purple {
color: #984ea3;
}
span.highlight-sky {
display: inline-block;
padding: 0 0.2em;
background-color: rgba(137, 202, 211, 0.5);
}
span.highlight-burgundy {
display: inline-block;
padding: 0 0.2em;
background-color: rgba(133, 46, 87, 0.3);
}
.pull-left {
text-align: left;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="reveal">
<div class="slides">
<section>
<h1>Actuarial sentencing and Bias Behind Bars</h1>
</section>
<section>
<h1><a href="https://bit.ly/3BP0AZu">bit.ly/3BP0AZu</a></h1>
</section>
<section>
<p>You can also find the GitHub repository for this presentation at:</p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/tomcardoso/carleton-bias-2022">github.com/tomcardoso/carleton-bias-2022</a></p>
</section>
<section>
<h2>About me</h2>
<img style="width: auto; height: 35vh; margin-top: 10px;" src="img/tom.jpg" />
<p>Tom Cardoso, investigative reporter <br>at The Globe and Mail</p>
<p><a href="https://www.twitter.com/tom_cardoso">@tom_cardoso</a></p>
</section>
<section style="top: 12.5%; width: 125%; left: -12.5%;">
<img src="img/cover-1.jpg" alt="" style="height: 50vh;" />
<img src="img/cover-2.jpg" alt="" style="height: 50vh;" />
<img src="img/cover-3.jpg" alt="" style="height: 50vh;" />
<img src="img/cover-4.jpg" alt="" style="height: 50vh;" />
</section>
<section>
<p>First, a primer on prisons</p>
</section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>A sentence of <strong>two years or longer</strong> lands you in federal prison.</li>
<li>Roughly 12,000 to 14,000 people in custody each year.</li>
<li>Most prisoners don’t serve until their sentence is up — instead, they get paroled or stat released</li>
<li>Various institutions across the country for men and women. They’re divided into minimum-, medium- and maximum-security facilities.</li>
<li>We have a <strong>massive</strong> overincarceration problem for Indigenous and Black people.</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<img src="img/incarceration-rates.png" alt="" style="height: 65vh;" />
</section>
<section>
<h3>Why did we focus on risk scores?</h3>
</section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>Within prison, <strong>risk assessments</strong> are a constant. Prisoner are repeatedly assessed and reassessed, and their life inside depends in large part on how they score</li>
<li>In essence, these tools are designed to measure an person’s risk to the public and their odds of rehabilitation</li>
<li>Work, housing, treatment programs, privileges, parole – scores affect it all</li>
<li>As a federal judge put it in 2015, risk scores are “like a branding – hard to overcome”</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>Canada is something of a world leader in risk assessments</li>
<li>The risk-need-responsivity model, used around the world, was developed in Canada</li>
<li>Most tools will output a level: low, medium, high, etc.</li>
<li>Others will also give you a numeric score, as well as a person’s likelihood of reoffending within a certain period of time</li>
<li>Criminal risk tools are the grandparents of modern machine learning models. They’re pen-and-paper algorithms.</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class="pull-left">
<p>While CSC’s tools don’t explicitly ask about a person’s race, they can certainly capture it by asking questions about family structure, substance use, levels of education, where a person grew up, etc.</p>
<p>In fact, race has previously been a <strong>direct component</strong> of risk assessments.</p>
<p>In 1928, Ernest Burgess, a Canadian-born University of Chicago sociologist, built a now-famous tool for the Illinois Board of Paroles that predicted a person’s odds of reoffending. One of the 22 variables used was the <strong>race of the person’s father.</strong></p>
</section>
<section>
<h3>So: What are the Correctional Service of Canada’s risk assessments like?</h3>
</section>
<section class="pull-left">
<p>CSC uses two separate risk scoring approaches:</p>
<p><strong>Actuarial tools</strong>, which require officers to fill out a questionnaire and tally up the resulting score</p>
<p><strong>Structured professional judgment tools</strong>, which rely on an officer’s experience and opinion</p>
</section>
<section>
<p>Though there are many risk tools and types of scores in federal prison, two are most important: <strong>security classification</strong> and the <strong>reintegration potential score</strong>.</p>
<div class="">
<div class="w30">
<img src="img/CRS-pg1.jpg" alt="" style=" height: auto;" />
<p class="small"><em>Custody Rating Scale</em></p>
</div>
<div class="w30">
<img src="img/Static-1.jpg" alt="" style="height: auto;" />
<p class="small"><em>Static Factors</em></p>
</div>
<div class="w30">
<img src="img/Dynamic-1.jpg" alt="" style="height: auto;" />
<p class="small"><em>Dynamic Factors</em></p>
</div>
</div>
</section>
<section>
<img src="img/CRS-pg1.jpg" alt="" style=" height: auto; margin-top: -1em;" />
</section>
<section>
<p>But…</p>
<p><span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>But: Evaluating risk is tricky. Tons of room for bias.</strong></span></p>
</section>
<section style="font-size: 0.9em;">
<ul>
<li>Highly subjective to the assessor (could lead to low inter-rater reliability)</li>
<li>Results are tough to interpret. What does it mean to have a “medium” security risk?</li>
<li>Experts disagree over how risk scores should be developed and administered</li>
<li>Current federal risk tools are <strong>old</strong>. Over time, they become less effective</li>
<li>Most were built off a sample of mostly white, male prisoners from the 1980s</li>
<li><span class="highlight-burgundy">Danger of cultural bias</span></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class="pull-left">
<p>Another major problem with risk scores is that they often rely on criminal history, which becomes a proxy for race. As Prof. Bernard Harcourt at Columbia University put it to me:</p>
<p><em>“You’re not predicting the actual essence of the person and their dangerousness – you’re predicting how likely it is that, because of policing disparities, they would get arrested again. … You’re not predicting crime. You’re predicting policing.”</em></p>
<p>In other words, being Black or Indigenous becomes a risk factor in itself.</p>
</section>
<section>
<h3>What we found</h3>
<p><em>After using a model to control for variables like age, gender, the severity of people’s offences and past contact with the criminal justice system…</em></p>
<p>Black men are roughly <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>24%</strong></span> more likely than white men to end up in maximum security at admission.</p>
<p>Indigenous men are roughly <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>30%</strong></span> more likely to have the worst reintegration score at any point.</p>
<p>Both are <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>less likely</strong></span> to reoffend after controlling for reintegration scores.</p>
</section>
<section>
<h3>Even worse for Indigenous women</h3>
<p>They’re roughly <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>64%</strong></span> more likely than white women to end up in maximum security at admission.</p>
<p>Also roughly <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>40%</strong></span> more likely to receive the worst reintegration score.</p>
</section>
<section>
<p>And, as an internal report we obtained made clear: The government had warned the Correctional Service <strong>in 2004</strong> of serious bias in its risk scores.</p>
<p>To this day, the risk tools used to produce those scores remain unchanged.</p>
</section>
<section>
<h3>Earlier this year, also explored the impact of race and risk scores on parole.</h3>
</section>
<section>
<p>Parole decisions are their own kind of risk assessment.</p>
<p>Before you’re released, you need to go before the Parole Board of Canada and make your case for release — a process which includes questions about your risk to reoffend, and which considers your risk scores.</p>
<p><em>“The law is saying that at the time of release, we’re supposed to be looking at what they’re doing to society in the future. … When you say that, you’re saying we’re going to punish people for what they haven’t yet done.” — Prof. Tony Doob, U of T</em></p>
</section>
<section>
<img src="img/renford.jpeg" alt="Renford Farrier at Springhill Institution, Nova Scotia, in 2021" style="width: 100vw; height: auto;">
</section>
<section style="font-size: 0.9em;">
<ul>
<li>This is Renford Farrier, who received a life-10 sentence after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the early 90’s.</li>
<li>But after 30 years, Renford is still inside. He says it’s because of his race, and the impacts that has on his risk scores and experience of incarceration.</li>
<li>Worth listening to Renford tell his own story. He spoke on The Globe’s podcast, The Decibel. <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-racialized-prisoners-in-canada-get-fewer-chances-at-parole-than-white/#bonuspodcast">Listen here</a>.</li>
<li>He’s not alone. Our analysis found that Indigenous, Black and other racialized men are respectively <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>26</strong></span>, <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>24</strong></span> and <span class="highlight-burgundy"><strong>20</strong></span> per cent less likely than their white peers to be paroled in the first year they’re eligible.</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h3>Response and feedback</h3>
</section>
<section style="font-size: 0.85em">
<ul>
<li>First story published on a Saturday. By Monday, the House of Commons’ public safety committee had announced a study of systemic racism in prison risk assessments with all-party support</li>
<li>Prime Minister acknowledged findings a few days later</li>
<li>Lawyers have used our reporting at parole hearings</li>
<li>Two class-action lawsuits filed against the government on behalf of tens of thousands of prisoners</em></li>
<li>Findings reiterated by Auditor-General of Canada earlier this year</li>
<li>Series has won journalism awards both in Canada and abroad</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h3>What surprised us about what we uncovered?</h3>
</section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>The (quantifiable!) impact of race on people’s scores was very large</li>
<li>In fact, it was so large we were initially convinced we’d made a grave methodological error</li>
<li>Furthermore, the Correctional Service had been aware of these issues, both through a Public Safety Canada report and numerous reports from other agencies and experts, for almost two decades — but did nothing</li>
<li>Even parole officers we spoke with had concerns about these tools, and they use them every day!</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h3>Where does the government (and academia) go from here?</h3>
</section>
<section>
<ul>
<li>Given the current class-action suit, it seems unlikely CSC will voluntarily pull its risk tools any time soon</li>
<li>The series seems to have kicked off a conversation in some places about what a better custodial risk assessment might look like</li>
<li>(Do we even need one at all?)</li>
<li>It’s worth asking: What would a culturally-appropriate risk tool look like?</li>
<li>How can we mitigate and counteract the avalanche of biases faced by racialized prisoners?</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<p>Stories</p>
<ul style="font-size: 0.45em;">
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-investigation-racial-bias-in-canadian-prison-risk-assessments/">Bias behind bars: A Globe investigation finds a prison system stacked against Black and Indigenous inmates <em>(Oct. 24, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-investigation-racial-bias-in-canadian-prisons-methodology/">How we did it: How The Globe uncovered systemic bias in prisoners’ risk assessments <em>(Oct. 24, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-risk-backstory/">A shot in the dark and 185 megabytes of data: How I investigated a system of bias in Canada’s prison system <em>(Oct. 24, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-this-needs-action-ndp-experts-call-for-solutions-to-racial-bias-in/">‘This needs action’: NDP, experts call for solutions to racial bias in federal prison risk assessments <em>(Oct. 26, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-committee-mps-support-push-to-study-systemic-prison-racism/">Fight against systemic racism in prison wins all-party support <em>(Oct. 26, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-more-needs-to-be-done-to-fight-systemic-racism-in-federal-prisons/">More needs to be done to fight systemic racism in federal prisons, Justin Trudeau says <em>(Oct. 27, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mps-ask-bill-blair-for-timeline-to-address-systemic-racism/">MPs ask Bill Blair for timeline to address systemic racism in prisons <em>(Nov. 2, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-for-indigenous-women-systemic-racial-bias-in-prison-leaves-many-worse/">For Indigenous women, systemic racial bias in prison leaves many worse off than men <em>(Dec. 31, 2020)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-inmate-risk-assessment-tool-still-in-use-16-years-after-report-calls/">Inmate risk assessment tool still in use 16 years after report raises concerns about bias against women <em>(Jan. 3, 2021)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-proposed-class-action-suit-against-ottawa-suggests-inmates-face/">Proposed class-action suit against Ottawa suggests inmates face systemic bias in risk assessments <em>(Jan. 12, 2021)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-injunction-request-aims-to-end-prison-risk-assessment-tool-biased/">Injunction request aims to end prison risk-assessment tool biased against Indigenous people <em>(June 2, 2021)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-racialized-prisoners-in-canada-get-fewer-chances-at-parole-than-white/">No way out: Once behind bars, racialized people are far less likely to get paroled when they are eligible. A Globe analysis examines why <em>(February 22, 2022)</em></a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-scathing-auditor-general-report-finds-indigenous-and-black-offenders/">Auditor-General says corrections authorities not preventing systemic racism in federal prisons <em>(May 31, 2022)</em></a></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section>
<h3>Questions?</h3>
<p>Perhaps we can start with a discussion: What would a culturally-responsive risk tool look like?</p>
</section>
</div>
</div>
<script src="dist/reveal.js"></script>
<script src="plugin/notes/notes.js"></script>
<script src="plugin/markdown/markdown.js"></script>
<script src="plugin/highlight/highlight.js"></script>
<script>
Reveal.initialize({
hash: true,
slideNumber: true,
history: true,
plugins: [RevealHighlight]
});
</script>
</body>
</html>