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How we go about estimating casualties in Syria—Part 1
I spent the two weeks over Easter working with Patrick and Megan in San Francisco, trying to figure out a strategy of how best to estimate the number of casualties the Syrian civil war has claimed in the past two years. In January, HRDAG published a report on the number of fully identified casualties reported in the Syrian Arab Republic between March 2011 and November 2012. The number of de-duplicated records of killings for this period was 59,648, a number that is likely to be an undercount since we know that many incidences of lethal violence in conflict go unreported, and that the unreported cases are not missing at random. (more…)
BJS Report on Arrest-Related Deaths: True Number Likely Much Greater
(This post is co-authored by Patrick Ball and Kristian Lum.)
Today the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) released a report on their effort to document “all deaths that occur during the process of arrest in the United States.” The analysis estimates that the Arrest-Related Deaths (ARD) program covers only 34-49% of these deaths. A parallel program by the FBI (the Supplementary Homicide Reports, SHR) is estimated to cover approximately the same proportion of deaths. Even taking into consideration both programs, 28% of all police homicides remain unreported.
In order to estimate the total number of homicides that appear on neither the ARD or ...
Rise of the racist robots – how AI is learning all our worst impulses
“If you’re not careful, you risk automating the exact same biases these programs are supposed to eliminate,” says Kristian Lum, the lead statistician at the San Francisco-based, non-profit Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG). Last year, Lum and a co-author showed that PredPol, a program for police departments that predicts hotspots where future crime might occur, could potentially get stuck in a feedback loop of over-policing majority black and brown neighbourhoods. The program was “learning” from previous crime reports. For Samuel Sinyangwe, a justice activist and policy researcher, this kind of approach is “especially nefarious” because police can say: “We’re not being biased, we’re just doing what the math tells us.” And the public perception might be that the algorithms are impartial.
Herb Spirer, 1925 – 2018
Herb led and mentored a generation of statisticians working in human rights.
Primer to Inform Discussions about Bail Reform
The primer addresses what pretrial risk assessment is and what the research supports.
RustConf 2019, and systems programming as a data scientist
It could make sense to use Rust as a data journalist for in-browser computations, and other thoughts from RustConf.
.Rproj Considered Harmful
We aim to produce code that is clear, replicatable across machines and operating systems, and that leaves an easy-to-follow audit trail.
Learning a Modular, Auditable and Reproducible Workflow
The modular nature of the workflow and use of Git allowed us to work on different parts of the project from across the country.
Can the Armed Conflict Become Part of Colombia’s History?
Paula Amado and María Juliana Durán Fedullo reflect on how the Truth Commission may change Colombia’s history, finally officially acknowledging the 50-year conflict and its casualties, and reckoning with who did what to whom.
How Data Analysis Confirmed the Bias in a Family Screening Tool
In Pittsburgh …
How Predictive Policing Reinforces Bias
Algorithmic tools like PredPol were supposed to reduce bias. But HRDAG has found that racial bias is baked into the data used to train the tools.
How Pretrial Risk Assessment Tools Perpetuate Unfairness
Tools like Compas allegedly help judges predict future criminal activities and eliminate bias. HRDAG and partners showed how the tools recycle bias.
Transitional Justice in Syria: Accountability and Reconciliation Conference
I spent last weekend in Istanbul at an excellent conference organized by the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies (SCPSS). The conference included numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from Syria as well as international human rights researchers and advocates. Families of victims told their stories, data collection groups discussed the challenges, and need, to document violations, transitional justice experts worried about infrastructure such as the police force and judicial system, and local leaders pledged to work together for peace.
I was invited to speak about HRDAG's recent report examining killings in Syria documented by ...
HRDAG Analysis Supports Efforts to Hold Salvadoran Commanders Accountable for 1989 Jesuit Massacre
Almost a quarter century ago, on November 16, 1989, six Jesuit scholars, their housekeeper and her 15-year-old daughter were massacred inside the University of Central America (UCA) in San Salvador, El Salvador. Their chief target was the rector of the country’s leading university. The murders were carried out by members of the elite Atlacatl Battalion, acting on the direct orders of the highest-ranking members of the Salvadoran military. The United Nations–sponsored Truth Commission for El Salvador found that members of the Salvadoran military's high command “gave...the order to kill Father Ignacio Ellacuría and to leave no witnesses.” ...
Quantitative Research at the AHPN Guatemala
In early 2006 I joined the Historical Archive of the National Police (Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional, or AHPN) without knowing the impact it would have on my future. I started with cleaning, organizing and classifying documents—and learning, with other colleagues, what a historical archive is and how it works.
By April of that year, parallel to these learning processes, I was selected along with 20 other people to begin work on the challenging Quantitative Research project. I started as a "coder," transferring key content from documents into a database. (more…)
The Art and Science of Coding AHPN Documents
The coding, from my perspective, is the heart of the project. I say this, because the coding team has the responsibility of selecting documents according to the random sample, recording the documents’ contents, and applying the criteria to convert that content into an entry in a quantitative database. Not to mention the fact that this team has the privilege of being in direct contact with the documents.
At present, because of advanced organizational processes, not everyone has a chance to hold an original document in their hands. The quantitative study had many advantages in this regard; since we started work in parallel with the archival ...
IRR: Agreement Among Coders is Key
For years I have been engaged in a quantitative study at Guatemala’s Historic Archive of the National Police, or AHPN. (See the blogposts below.) In this study coders collect data on sheets of paper according to criteria established and explained in manuals. But when collecting data, there’s always room for human error—this is why the validity of the study hinges on verifying that coders use the correct criteria.
It is important to mention that the mainstay of coding is the use of a controlled vocabulary. A controlled vocabulary gives analysts a framework, or frame of reference, when converting qualitative information into categories ...
The AHPN: Home of Stories Old and New
Access to the records contained in archives is a concern shared by many. Archives support memory and free access to them strengthens democratic processes. Everyone should be allowed to see first-hand the records contained in an archive and be free to interpret them as needed.
Access to archives can increase knowledge on various topics and opens opportunities for different fields of knowledge. (more…)
Data Mining for Good: CJA Drink + Think
At the Center for Justice and Accountability's happy hour, "Drink and Think," Patrick Ball spoke about "Data Mining for Good." The talk included a discussion of how HRDAG brings human rights abusers to justice through data analysis, and HRDAG's work conducting quantitative analysis for truth commissions, NGOs, the UN and other partners. The event was held at Eventbrite. More photos are below.
The Center for Justice and Accountability
Young Professionals' Committee for Human Rights
September 16, 2014
San Francisco, California
Link to CJA event page
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All photos © 2014 Carter Brooks.