The Policy Machine

The dangers of letting algorithms make decisions in law enforcement, welfare, and child protection.

By Virginia Eubanks

Public services are becoming increasingly algorithmic, a reality that has spawned hyperbolic comparisons to RoboCop and Minority Report, enforcement droids and pre-cogs. But the future of high-tech policymaking looks less like science fiction and more like Google’s PageRank algorithm.

For example, according to the Chicago Tribune, Robert McDaniel, a 22-year-old Chicago resident, was surprised when police commander Barbara West showed up at his West Side home in 2013 to warn “the most dangerous gangbangers” to stop their violent ways. McDaniel, who had a misdemeanor conviction and several arrests on a variety of offenses—drug possession, gambling, domestic violence—had made Chicago’s now-notorious “heat list” of the 420 people most likely to be involved in violent crime sometime in the future. The list is the result of a proprietary predictive policing algorithm that likely crunches numbers on parole status, arrests, social networks, and proximity to violent crime.