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Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age
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 re a more cost-effective way to fight crime.
In "Against Prediction," Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he 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, Harcourt 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. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be "against prediction.
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In "Against Prediction," Bernard E. Harcourt challenges this growing reliance on actuarial methods. These prediction tools, he 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, Harcourt 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. The presumption, Harcourt concludes, should be "against prediction.
""
336 pages, ebook
First published December 15, 2006
6 people are currently reading
196 people want to read
About the author
Bernard E. Harcourt
23 books72 followersBernard Harcourt is the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law & Criminology and Chair and Professor of Political Science at The University of Chicago.
Professor Harcourt's scholarship intersects social and political theory, the sociology of punishment, criminal law and procedure, and criminology. He is the author of Against Prediction: Punishing and Policing in an Actuarial Age (University of Chicago Press 2007), Language of the Gun: Youth, Crime, and Public Policy (University of Chicago Press 2005), and Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken-Windows Policing (Harvard University Press 2001). Harcourt is also the coauthor of Criminal Law and the Regulation of Vice (Thompson West 2007), the editor of Guns, Crime, and Punishment in America (New York University Press 2003), and the founder and editor of the journal Carceral Notebooks.
Professor Harcourt earned his bachelor's degree in political theory at Princeton University, his law degree at Harvard Law School, and his PhD in political science at Harvard University. After law school, Professor Harcourt clerked for the Hon. Charles S. Haight Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then worked as an attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, representing death row inmates. Professor Harcourt continues to represent death row inmates pro bono, and has also served on human rights missions in South Africa and Guatemala.
Professor Harcourt has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, New York University, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Université Paris X–Nanterre, and Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III, and was previously on the faculty at the University of Arizona.
Education:
AB ,1984, Princeton University; JD, 1989, and PhD, 2000, Harvard University
Professor Harcourt's scholarship intersects social and political theory, the sociology of punishment, criminal law and procedure, and criminology. He is the author of Against Prediction: Punishing and Policing in an Actuarial Age (University of Chicago Press 2007), Language of the Gun: Youth, Crime, and Public Policy (University of Chicago Press 2005), and Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken-Windows Policing (Harvard University Press 2001). Harcourt is also the coauthor of Criminal Law and the Regulation of Vice (Thompson West 2007), the editor of Guns, Crime, and Punishment in America (New York University Press 2003), and the founder and editor of the journal Carceral Notebooks.
Professor Harcourt earned his bachelor's degree in political theory at Princeton University, his law degree at Harvard Law School, and his PhD in political science at Harvard University. After law school, Professor Harcourt clerked for the Hon. Charles S. Haight Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and then worked as an attorney at the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, representing death row inmates. Professor Harcourt continues to represent death row inmates pro bono, and has also served on human rights missions in South Africa and Guatemala.
Professor Harcourt has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, New York University, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Université Paris X–Nanterre, and Université Paul Cézanne Aix-Marseille III, and was previously on the faculty at the University of Arizona.
Education:
AB ,1984, Princeton University; JD, 1989, and PhD, 2000, Harvard University
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 14, 2019
A brilliant criticism not just of racial profiling, but of profiling as such. Harcourt argues convincingly that even where there is a measurable difference between groups, profiling can actually lead to an increase in crime (or any other undesired effect) by letting the nonprofiled group off the hook. Even worse, the ratchet effect will lead to an over-representation of the profiled group among the profiler's observations that is far disproportionate to any real group differences and leads to extremely problematic associations in public perception between group traits like race and crime.
Unfortunately, Harcourt demonstrates this very effect in his criticism of racial profiling against young Muslim men in counter-terrorism. He writes:
"The first question to ask is whether there is an offending differential between profiled and nonprofiled group members. [...] The answer to this first question is surely yes. Of the total population in the United States, there are extremely few persons of European, American, African American, or East Asian descent who have committed or appear prepared to commit suicide bombings or similar mass terrorist attacks against Americans. Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", who was traveling to the United States on a British passport, and Jose Padilla, a Hispanic American arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport and accused of plotting a terrorist attack, are the two people who come immediately to mind—out of a population of about 200 million (excluding children, the elderly, and young men of color)."
Really? Those are THE two people that come to mind? Apparently, it's not terrorism if the killer is white and is using a gun. Granted, the book was published in 2007 and perhaps it was easier back then to ignore the steady stream of news about mass shootings by white male perpetrators, often motivated by racism or misogyny. But Columbine happened in 1999, so it's more likely that in Harcourt's mind, terrorism simply has a brown face.
Despite this major flaw, most of the analysis is well worth reading and can be applied to uses of prediction outside of the crime context (why do we consider individualised risk assessment in insurance acceptable, if the whole purpose of insurance is to spread risk over diverse populations?). The analysis is strongest when Harcourt points out how the tools available to us can shape our conception of just punishment: When prediction using statistical tools is what science can do best, incapacitating criminals who pose the greatest future threat becomes the implied and only goal of punishment. This is but one example of the law and our conception of right and wrong following the availability of technical tools to measure certain aspects of the world, rather than our conception of right and wrong guiding the development of technical tools.
Unfortunately, Harcourt demonstrates this very effect in his criticism of racial profiling against young Muslim men in counter-terrorism. He writes:
"The first question to ask is whether there is an offending differential between profiled and nonprofiled group members. [...] The answer to this first question is surely yes. Of the total population in the United States, there are extremely few persons of European, American, African American, or East Asian descent who have committed or appear prepared to commit suicide bombings or similar mass terrorist attacks against Americans. Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", who was traveling to the United States on a British passport, and Jose Padilla, a Hispanic American arrested at Chicago's O'Hare airport and accused of plotting a terrorist attack, are the two people who come immediately to mind—out of a population of about 200 million (excluding children, the elderly, and young men of color)."
Really? Those are THE two people that come to mind? Apparently, it's not terrorism if the killer is white and is using a gun. Granted, the book was published in 2007 and perhaps it was easier back then to ignore the steady stream of news about mass shootings by white male perpetrators, often motivated by racism or misogyny. But Columbine happened in 1999, so it's more likely that in Harcourt's mind, terrorism simply has a brown face.
Despite this major flaw, most of the analysis is well worth reading and can be applied to uses of prediction outside of the crime context (why do we consider individualised risk assessment in insurance acceptable, if the whole purpose of insurance is to spread risk over diverse populations?). The analysis is strongest when Harcourt points out how the tools available to us can shape our conception of just punishment: When prediction using statistical tools is what science can do best, incapacitating criminals who pose the greatest future threat becomes the implied and only goal of punishment. This is but one example of the law and our conception of right and wrong following the availability of technical tools to measure certain aspects of the world, rather than our conception of right and wrong guiding the development of technical tools.
April 19, 2017
Actuarial methods based on past evidence will create systems perpetuating current outcomes. Gives you an interesting perspective on the role of technology and academia in shaping policy.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews