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The Forensic Humanitarian

International human rights work attracts activists and lawyers, diplomats and retired politicians. One of the most admired figures in the field, however, is a ponytailed statistics guru from Silicon Valley named Patrick Ball, who has spent nearly two decades fashioning a career for himself at the intersection of mathematics and murder. You could call him a forensic humanitarian.


Inside a Dictator’s Secret Police


Can ‘predictive policing’ prevent crime before it happens?

100x100-sciencemagHRDAG analyst William Isaac is quoted in this article about so-called crime prediction. “They’re not predicting the future. What they’re actually predicting is where the next recorded police observations are going to occur.”


Carnegie Mellon Partners With Human Rights Data Analysis Group To Improve Syrian Casualty Reporting


Celebrating Women in Statistics

kristian lum headshot 2018In her work on statistical issues in criminal justice, Lum has studied uses of predictive policing—machine learning models to predict who will commit future crime or where it will occur. In her work, she has demonstrated that if the training data encodes historical patterns of racially disparate enforcement, predictions from software trained with this data will reinforce and—in some cases—amplify this bias. She also currently works on statistical issues related to criminal “risk assessment” models used to inform judicial decision-making. As part of this thread, she has developed statistical methods for removing sensitive information from training data, guaranteeing “fair” predictions with respect to sensitive variables such as race and gender. Lum is active in the fairness, accountability, and transparency (FAT) community and serves on the steering committee of FAT, a conference that brings together researchers and practitioners interested in fairness, accountability, and transparency in socio-technical systems.


Data Mining for Good: Thoreau Center Lunch + Learn

At the Thoreau Center for Sustainability's “Lunch and Learn,” Patrick Ball spoke about “Data Mining for Good.” The talk included a discussion of how HRDAG uses random sampling, entity resolution, communications metadata, and statistical modeling to assist prosecutions of human rights violators. With an introduction by John DeCock, Chief Operating and Outreach Officer, Bioneers. The Thoreau Center for Sustainability Lunch and Learn October 23, 2014 San Francisco, California Back to Talks  

Core Concepts

Inaccurate statistics can damage the credibility of human rights claims—and that's why we strive to ensure that statistics about human rights violations are generated with as much rigor and are as scientifically accurate as possible. But, what are the pitfalls leading to inaccuracy—when, where, and how do data become compromised? How are patterns biased by having only partial data? And what are the best scientific methods for collecting, managing, processing and analyzing data? Here are the data pitfalls that HRDAG has identified, as well as some of our approaches for meeting these challenges. We believe that human rights researchers must take ...

Uncovering Police Violence in Chicago: A collaboration between HRDAG and Invisible Institute

In 2014 and again in 2020, the Invisible Institute, a Chicago grassroots organization, won lawsuits that granted them access to decades of complaints of misconduct by Chicago police officers. The collection contains hundreds of thousands of pages of allegation forms, memos, various police administrative forms, interviews and testimonies, pictures, and even embedded audio files. The Institute published scanned images on the Citizens Police Data Project, and is using them for a project with HRDAG known as Beneath the Surface, which is a detailed investigation into gender-based violence by Chicago Police. Image: David Peters Often, gender-b...

CIIDH Data – Variables List

Version date: 2000.01.29 Current version: ATV20.1 Patrick Ball & Herbert F. Spirer Below are listed the 19 files that constitute the CIIDH database. We have noted those that include data that might be analytically useful in future versions of ATV. File names and brief definitions are in bold, and variable summaries are in bulleted points. CXTOV2 (Context; links to VLCNV2) Additional detail on geographic location of case Narrative summary CXTOV2ex (Context extension; links to CXTOV2) Fine breakdown on the age category & sex of anonymous victims CXTOV2lg (Context extension; links to CXTOV2) Legal procedures taken on behalf of the ...

Pulling the Plug: Network Disruptions and Violence in the Syrian Conflict

At this year's International Studies Association Annual Convention, Anita Gohdes presented a talk titled, "Pulling the Plug: Network Disruptions and Violence in the Syrian Conflict," while director of research Megan Price served on the working group, "Global Trends in War, Conflict, and Political Violence." International Studies Association Annual Convention March 26-29, 2014 Toronto, Canada Link to ISA 2014 program Back to Talks

Donate with Cryptocurrency

Help HRDAG use data science to work for justice, accountability, and human rights. We are nonpartisan and nonprofit, but we are not neutral; we are always on the side of human rights. Cryptocurrency donations to 501(c)3 charities receive the same tax treatment as stocks. Your donation is a non-taxable event, meaning you do not owe capital gains tax on the appreciated amount and can deduct it on your taxes. This makes Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency donations one of the most tax efficient ways to support us. We are a team of experts in machine learning, applied and mathematical statistics, computer science, demography, and social science, and ...

Ouster of Guatemala’s Attorney General

We were surprised and disappointed to learn that our colleague Claudia Paz y Paz has had her term as Guatemala’s attorney general cut short. The nation’s Constitutional Court ruled on 6 February that her four-year term will end this May, instead of in December. (She was appointed in December 2010, replacing an attorney general who was appointed in May 2010.) During her term, she put four generals from Guatemala’s civil war on the stand for charges of crimes against humanity and genocide, including General José Efraín Ríos Montt, who ruled from 1982 to 1983. We were fortunate to work with her on that trial and to witness the handing down of a ...

November 1st Statement from Alejandra García at the close of her Father’s trial


Court Sentences Two Former Policemen to 40 Years in Prison Todanoticia.com


Using Data and Statistics to Bring Down Dictators

In this story, Guerrini discusses the impact of HRDAG’s work in Guatemala, especially the trials of General José Efraín Ríos Montt and Colonel Héctor Bol de la Cruz, as well as work in El Salvador, Syria, Kosovo, and Timor-Leste. Multiple systems estimation and the perils of using raw data to draw conclusions are also addressed.
Megan Price and Patrick Ball are quoted, especially in regard to how to use raw data.
“From our perspective,” Price says, “the solution to that is both to stay very close to the data, to be very conservative in your interpretation of it and to be very clear about where the data came from, how it was collected, what its limitations might be, and to a certain extent to be skeptical about it, to ask yourself questions like, ‘What is missing from this data?’ and ‘How might that missing information change these conclusions that I’m trying to draw?’”


Media Centre


The World According to Artificial Intelligence (Part 1)

The World According to Artificial Intelligence: Targeted by Algorithm (Part 1)

The Big Picture: The World According to AI explores how artificial intelligence is being used today, and what it means to those on its receiving end.

Patrick Ball is interviewed: “Machine learning is pretty good at finding elements out of a huge pool of non-elements… But we’ll get a lot of false positives along the way.”


The case against Hissene Habre


Humanitarian Statistics

In late 2006, a statistical study of deaths that occurred after the invasion of Iraq ignited a storm of controversy. This Lancet study estimated that more than 650,000 additional Iraqis died during the invasion than would have at pre-invasion death rates, a vastly higher estimate than any previous. But in January, a World Health Organization study placed the number at about 150,000.


Historic verdict in Guatemala—Gen.Efraín Ríos Montt found guilty

I've been working with various projects in Guatemala to document mass violence since 1993, so in 2011, when Claudia Paz y Paz asked me to revisit the analysis I did for the Commission for Historical Clarification examining the differential mortality rates due to homicide for indigenous and non-indigenous people in the Ixil region, I was delighted. We have far better data processing and statistical methods than we had in 1998, plus much more data. I think the resulting analysis is a conservative lower bound on total homicides of indigenous people. (more…)

Our work has been used by truth commissions, international criminal tribunals, and non-governmental human rights organizations. We have worked with partners on projects on five continents.

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