[HN Gopher] Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona ... ___________________________________________________________________ Whistleblowers: Software keeping inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates Author : macg333 Score : 784 points Date : 2021-02-22 15:57 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (kjzz.org) (TXT) w3m dump (kjzz.org) | bookmarkable wrote: | If you broke out of prison after your release date, are you | breaking the law? Or refuse to go in your cell? This is some | gross bureaucratic incompetence, so I couldn't really fault an | inmate that wasn't willing to spend even 5 extra minutes in | prison. | djrogers wrote: | I'd hesitate to call this a software bug, this is a complete | breakdown of planning. | | FTA - ""Currently this calculation is not in ACIS at all," the | report states. "ACIS can calculate 1 earned credit for every 6 | days served, but this is a new calculation."" | | tldr; a new law was passed that allowed for a different credit | schedule for days served, and the system hasn't been updated to | make that calculation. | undecisive wrote: | It's the problem with silver bullets like YAGNI: Laws change, | if your system is dependent on laws, then you can be sure that | new rules will need to be added. You need a system that is | configurable, you can be sure you are going to need it. | | Of course, if there's money to be made in having a change- | resistant system, well that's a different story. YAGNIAYWPTTNFI | (You ARE gonna need it, and you will pay through the nose for | it) isn't quite as catchy though | Ma8ee wrote: | YAGNI just means that you don't know how the laws are going | to change. All the configurability you add is just going to | make the system more expensive and even harder to change the | day when the laws are changed, and it wasn't anything you | thought of. And no one is ever using all your nice switches. | ClumsyPilot wrote: | Now we can place configurable smart contracts on blockchaim | that keep track of your prisoners! | | PrisonChain(c) | zepto wrote: | > if your system is dependent on laws, then you can be sure | that new rules will need to be added. You need a system that | is configurable, you can be sure you are going to need it. | | This doesn't violate YAGNI. | | 1. You'd have to know in advance what the scope of rule | changes would be in order to implement the configuration | system. | | Human laws do not fit this constraint. | | 2. You'd also need a way to prove that the configuration | system itself was sound. | | 3. You'd need a way to test configurations to make sure they | executed as expected. | | That is likely to be no better than just updating the | codebase as requirements change, and there are many ways it | could increase the cost. | readams wrote: | You'd need a configuration system that is so general it would | become a programming language. And then nobody could | configure it except the original programmers because now your | rules are written in the weird badly-designed programming | language you developed. | [deleted] | mbar84 wrote: | Do the Arizona prisons get more money, the more prisoners they | have and the longer they have them? Were these same prisons | responsible for the procurement of this software? Is the software | perhaps working as intended? | tantalor wrote: | This isn't a "bug". The problem is the software was not designed | to do this and needs to be updated to support a change in | requirements | | Bugs are when software does something it isn't supposed to, or | doesn't do something it is supposed to. In this case, it's doing | exactly what it was intended to do when it was implemented and | put into service. Since then things have changed, so the vendor | needs to implement the feature request, not "fix the bug", but | this takes time. | | > They estimated fixing the SB1310 bug would take roughly 2,000 | additional programming hours. | | wtf? | | Guessing they estimated 1 person-year, but that's absurdly high. | WrtCdEvrydy wrote: | Pay the money or the inmates stay in prison for longer... weird | hostage negotiation but okay... | rileymat2 wrote: | There is a lot of reasonable opinions on the topic, but I would | consider design and requirements bugs that render the software | unfit for purpose to be bugs as well. | lbriner wrote: | If they were design and requirements then fine, but you | cannot consider something that was not asked or paid for as a | bug. As with many cock-ups, somebody did not know enough to | ask for the right thing. | | On top of that, someone should have been in the room to tell | the State Governor that their proposed change was not | supported in software and needed something out-of-band to | manage it. | tshaddox wrote: | It's still a bug, even if the project managers or software | engineers are not responsible for causing the bug. I think | people are just using "it's not a bug" to mean "it's not my | fault as a member of the software engineering team." But of | course there are bugs which are not the software | engineering team's fault. | plif wrote: | Seems high, but this is par for the course for this type of | work. You would usually estimate this in terms of months for a | team. Let's say a team of 4 for simplicity -- that brings it to | ~3 months. | | I'd also be careful with the term "programming hours". I'm not | sure how the news article got that or who said that initially, | but it seems like a misrepresentation of the type of work | needed. That estimate almost certainly includes everything | involved in getting the code to production. You can imagine | that means a lot of QA, red tape and holding the code's hand | through environments. | azinman2 wrote: | Sounds like the QA wasn't very good from the beginning | considering the number of actual bugs reported. | plif wrote: | Not trying to defend anyone, but I'm sure we can find many | other reasons why there are so many bugs here unrelated to | QA :) | worik wrote: | What is QA if it cannot be blamed for low quality? | vntok wrote: | If the specs are bad, QA will find low quality spots of | undefined behaviour (anything goes, ergo it's fine), or | even actual logic issues in the specs. | | However the software is coded to specs, not to QA's own | desires, so the bugs stay. | londons_explore wrote: | 1 person-year is pretty much the smallest labor unit when | quoting for modifications to government contracts. | | If the government wants to change the logo on the login screen, | they're gonna pay 1 person-year. Why would I quote less? It'll | take over 1 person-year for another contractor to pick up and | start supporting the codebase, and we won't support a codebase | that another contractor has touched. | | It's just the nature of government IT. Lowball the initial | quote, then charge massively for any modifications and support | now they're locked in. | caturopath wrote: | We did tons of tiny contracts when I was working in | government contracting (DOD/DOE). | deefour wrote: | Okay? | caturopath wrote: | So my experience (government contracts have a floor of an | person-year) doesn't match my experience with government | contracts. | [deleted] | mywittyname wrote: | Once you've executed on enough of these contracts, you | develop an idea of what the unknown-unknowns are and plan for | them. | | It's government work, which automatically means access | issues, dozens (or hundreds) of stakeholders requesting | meetings, internal politicking, back-and-forth over change | requests, etc. All of that costs real money and if you don't | plan for it or make contingencies, you're going to be | screwed. | | These issues are not just limited to government either; any | sufficiently large entity will have these same problems. So | yeah, one person-year is a reasonable minimum viable contract | period unless you have a process in place to fast-track RFP | approval. | tester756 wrote: | I heard that relatively smart govs stopped doing stuff like | this that the outsource whole projects, but now they "borrow" | programmers e.g "give me 20 programmers with higher edu and 5 | years of experience" and we will lead this project. | | but I'm not sure how's the reality. | crummybowley wrote: | But even if it was a bug... I don't understand why _software_ | would prevent somebody opening the gate and letting the inmate | out... | andi999 wrote: | Time to watch idiocracy again.. | giantg2 wrote: | Without the software, how will they know it's time to | release? | | Also, if you release someone and the system still shows them | as being in there, that could lead to a very bad interaction | for that person if they have any official interaction with | authorities while they are out. | worik wrote: | You assume that not only was there a bug in the software | (in that it had not been updated to follow the law) but | also it was terribly designed in that it could not cope | with manual overrides. | | Not a terrible stretch. You are probably correct. | anticensor wrote: | > it could not cope with manual overrides. | | Or, more likely, it lacked the manual override mechanism | _at all_. | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | None of those problems cited are the problems of the | inmate/ex-con. It's the state that is choosing to go ahead | with implementing buggy software affecting people's | freedom, it's the state's duty to make things right. | code_duck wrote: | Neither the staff or inmates know who qualifies or what their | release date should be. | | Apparently, they can let them out on time if they calculate | the release date and enter it into the system manually. | spaetzleesser wrote: | I have done some reading about people who got convicted | wrongfully. Being released from US prison is an extremely | bureaucratic and slow process where nobody seems to be | willing to apply some judgement. As long as the process was | followed everything is fine even if it's blindingly obvious | that the person is innocent. | | Getting into prison is easy but getting out is really hard | and will take you years even if everybody agrees a mistake | was made. | macintux wrote: | Never forget Troy Davis. Injustice abounds. | | https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2015/03/innocence-is- | not... | tssva wrote: | The article does state that they are currently hand | calculating the information. | MattGaiser wrote: | They might only know that it is not calculating some | sentences correctly. That does mean they have figured out | little more beyond "we know it is wrong." | JoeAltmaier wrote: | 1.5 million prisoners in the USA. You want to go through that | list, without software? | ironmagma wrote: | We're talking about Arizona. And every prison likely can | keep track of its own inmates. If they can't, what are they | doing running a prison? | anticensor wrote: | The imprisonment data is coordinated between the prison, | the police, the prosecution, the public service system | and local governments. All of them needs to be up-to- | date, or somebody would be screwed in process. | toomuchtodo wrote: | If the list is public, we can at least do the math | independently to hold corrections departments accountable | (filing suit to release eligible inmates when corrections | won't voluntarily release because of "software enhancements | waiting to be built"). | Firehawke wrote: | Not that simple. There are behavioral factors that can | affect a prisoner's status and that particular | information would never be public. | | It's a full-on bureaucracy where only the computers | actually know the correct full calculation for every | prisoner due to the complexity of the formulas, and when | the computers can't do that correctly people get screwed | with no recourse because it's humanly impossible to keep | up with every detail. | toomuchtodo wrote: | I agree it's not simple. I am advocating for activist | (engineering, political, etc) efforts against The | Bureaucracy. Public data is a component of that, from a | transparency and accountability perspective, very similar | to FOIAing everything you can get your hands on (ie | muckrock.com). You want to be able to "show your work" in | broad daylight. | TheSpiceIsLife wrote: | There's 1.5 million people right there who might be | interested. | | Even 0.07% of them, say about 1000 people, might volunteer | to learn the code base and programming language. | lostlogin wrote: | The article is about Arizona, which has under 40k. I don't | want to go through that manually either. | | https://www.stltoday.com/news/national/govt-and- | politics/ari... | klyrs wrote: | I dunno about that. With a good card catalog, that sounds | pretty manageable to me. You shouldn't need to parse the | whole database every day. | code_duck wrote: | I wouldn't do it myself, but I imagine a team of a few | hundred people could get it done in a month. We're only | talking about Arizona, though. | tshaddox wrote: | No, I want the presumably thousands of people who work at | prisons to each go through their list of prisoners and | determine when prisoners should be released, using the | assistance of software but not completely deferring to | software. | eptcyka wrote: | People working at prisons have no incentive to be kind or | instill any kind of humanity in their actions, thus I | would expect having them go through their list of | prisoners and determine when prisoners should be released | to have just as cynical a result as relying on broken | software. | tshaddox wrote: | I don't understand why that's your default presumption. | Although I don't have any data about this, my impression | is that generally people are aware of how long their | prison sentences are and are released from prison when | they are supposed to be. | klyrs wrote: | This is a matter of administrating the law. If they're | unwilling to do their job, they shouldn't have that job. | eptcyka wrote: | I am skeptical if the law has anything to do with the | people employed in the day-to-day operations of the US | prison system. | jessaustin wrote: | This is a somewhat horrific argument for draconian | imprisonment. | | Maybe we'd have better results if inmates could file | paperwork to receive the payments that would normally go to | the prison for their imprisonment, starting on the date | they should have been released. | incanus77 wrote: | Not picking on this comment in particular and not a domain | expert, but just a few ideas: | | - System needs to track sexual offenders and provide updates | on their locations to relevant municipalities | | - Parole officer check, requirements, and termination system | needs to know who, what, and where | | - Statistical record-keeping systems for sentence lengths | need to be updated | | - If felons, voting systems need to be kept updated | | All of these sorts of actions would be triggered by someone's | release and probably involve interconnected systems that rely | on truth data about the initial release. | | One major thing my career in software and systems has taught | me is that things are rarely as simple as they seem on the | surface. I tend to approach such systems with humility. | worik wrote: | ...and perhaps having a software system that handles the | decision process the institutional memory/knowledge | faded... | snicker7 wrote: | Literally none of those reasons justifies keeping someone | in a human cage. | anchpop wrote: | Pay each inmate $10k for each day they're unable to leave | prison past one week after the end of their sentence. | Most inmates probably wouldn't mind staying a couple | months longer if it means they get to leave with a | million dollars in the bank, and it would correct the | state's incentives. | jacob2484 wrote: | And just would pay this? You and I the taxpayers.... so | no thanks to this solution. | recursive wrote: | Well, they could just be released then... | vertex-four wrote: | You the taxpayers are the people who would prefer these | people stay in prison than release them. You took on the | responsibility when you put in place a system to imprison | them. You could always campaign for prison abolition if | you don't want the responsibility... | nybble41 wrote: | > You the taxpayers are the people who would prefer these | people stay in prison than release them. | | That's a rather broad blanket statement bordering on | collective punishment (which BTW is classified as a war | crime by the UN). The status of _taxpayer_ makes you a | victim of the state, not necessarily someone with | influence over its behavior and certainly not an ardent | supporter of all its policies. The vast majority of the | taxpayers had nothing to do with the situation and might | well be opposed to keeping these people in prison if the | facts were explained to them. | | Perhaps the matter should be put to a general vote--those | actually in favor of keeping the inmates in prison can | split the cost of any wrongful-imprisonment suit in the | event the state loses. | totalZero wrote: | All of these people should sue for false imprisonment. | | How much would that cost you? And how much is a day of a | free man's life worth to you? | | This is a travesty and that sum of money is neither | sufficient, nor unique to the GP's solution. | km3r wrote: | And yet, the software may save more than a million | dollars in admin costs. And as soon as the most of the | bug are worked out, it can operate less of those payouts. | Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. | mewpmewp2 wrote: | I don't understand how people here fail to see that | completely. Traffic accidents also happen, doesn't mean | we should abolish vehicles or allow only slow moving | armored vehicles on the road. | jrochkind1 wrote: | We all know that it takes more skill (and experience and domain | knowledge), and more time up-front, to create software that is | easier/cheaper to change later in response to changed | requirements. | | If you got the cheapest possible software up-front that | (barely, technically) met the original requirements, you did it | by hiring the least skilled people that could barely pull off | exactly what would get the contract paid, and asking them to | rush and hurry and pile up technical debt. | | So. | | In this case, the software perhaps shouldn't have even been | considered fulfilling the contract in the first place, that's | how crappy it was. The crappier the software, the more | expensive changes to it are, we all know that. | | > One department whistleblower said the number of problems with | the ACIS system was unprecedented in their professional | experience. "I have never in my life run across an application | like this," they said. "It's just been one big cluster." | aksss wrote: | I'd not be too quick to dismiss the estimate. If you were asked | to change a couple nested if statements in a prison's guest | management system, probably written in Natural, RPG, _and_ Cold | Fusion or some other obscure combo of tools, you'd be silly not | to take a step back and be careful with your bidding. | | I mean things probably seem to the outside like "it's just two | lines of code", but if you're messing with the business logic | of _releasing prisoners_ I'm sure you'd want to document how | things currently work pretty thoroughly (inferred | requirements), test /validate, have customer sign off on the | existing functionality, make your change, re-run all the | testing, requirements verification, etc. There's probably a | business analyst involved, a programmer, maybe even dedicated | test manager, devops (do they have an existing dev/test | system?). People in the prison bureau probably take their jobs | seriously on paper, don't want this change to cause more | breakage than it fixes, and expressed that in the RFP. | dang wrote: | OK, we've taken the bug out of the title above. It allows the | whistleblowers to squeeze in, which is nice. | | It might be good to have a non-terminological discussion now. | Though this subthread isn't too bad. | phamilton4 wrote: | To be frank, you probably want this solution to be vetted out | pretty well. I really don't want to think of cases where the | wrong person was let go. The sizing is what 12 people x 40 for | 4 weeks? Really not that extreme for large projects. | | I also don't understand why they can't identify these people | and release them by other means... | hinkley wrote: | The problem with government contracts is that they are very | much the class of customer who does not understand software | requirements. They have all the worst aspects of a small | company that doesn't understand software and so keeps whip- | cracking the architecture, and all of the bureaucracy of a | government with institutionalized PTSD about contract fraud and | bribery. | | If you have a choice between the regional furniture store and | your state government, I'd have a hard time advising you on | which one will suck less. It's a tossup. If the owners of the | furniture store are old enough to have heirs who are late teens | to 30-something, take the furniture store, because you can ask | them to intervene. | | At some point you have to pay the bills. And destress your | employees who are constantly having to hurry up and wait. | brundolf wrote: | I posted under another comment, but this to me is a software- | literacy problem. You shouldn't have to hire an engineer to fix | or adjust business rules in 2021. Period. The people who know | the domain should be able to maintain (and really, create) any | automation of that domain themselves. | | This is partly a failure of education, partly a failure of | organizational structuring, and partly a failure of software | accessibility. But it's a gargantuan failure all the same. | cynoclast wrote: | >The people who know the domain should be able to maintain | (and really, create) any automation of that domain | themselves. | | This is a recipe for disaster 100% of the time. One needs to | know both the domain and software to change software in the | domain. People who 'know the domain' but not software, when | given the tools to modify software within the domain | inevitably create an unmaintainable rats nest of more | difficult to change rules, almost invariably in some | proprietary WYSYWIG tool that creates more problems than it | solves. | opportune wrote: | This is why I think custom software contracting and | vendorization is a "noob-trap". | | Software needs to be updated and maintained and you never know | when you start writing it what the real requirements are. If I | were a taxpayer in this state I'd be angry that my money would | be going to a series of middlemen (e.g. a procurement | consultant, program manager on the gov side, a contractor | manager, the contracting company's cut) rather than some state | employed software developer. | monadic5 wrote: | C'mon, that's Big Government. We all know that's the least | efficient form of production possible. | | /s | mattmcknight wrote: | Unfortunately the pay scale for state software developers | never (I almost never say never) has a proper differential | over other employees with the same level of experience, | meaning they are often below 10th percentile of market rate, | and thus the employees that end up in those jobs tend to be | among the least skilled and motivated people I've ever dealt | with. Even though contractors mess up, you can fire them. | What's probably better is to keep a contractor available on | an hourly rate for maintenance like this, rather than pay per | change order. | | I also find the government "requirements" process tends to | create situations like this. Rather than build flexible | software that puts some degree of trust in the person using | it, they tend to overspecify the current bureaucratic | process. In many cases, the person pushing for the software | is looking to use software to enforce bureaucratic control | that they have been unable to otherwise exercise, with the | effect of the people the project initiator wants to use the | software simply working around it. They then institute all | sorts of punishments and controls to insure it must be used. | This then results in the kind of insane situation we have | here, where you can't do something perfectly legal because | "computer says no". | tp3 wrote: | If you're planning on breaking out of a certain contract- | type or the other will be even more ridiculous, then | consider putting out a separate RFP or having some special | setup that allows you to just bypass or do the RFP at a | higher rate. I'd recommend putting out an RFP for every | project that needs it, even though it's a small number of | the projects you're doing, and use that for the next | project so the future RFPs won't get wasted. Otherwise | you'll always run into these problems of a small number of | big companies needing to get approvals because they're the | one entity. | | It gets complicated but there are some simple rules to | follow. If you are running a non-competitive RFP then that | might be okay because you are running a competitive RFP and | so you get these opportunities to leverage your | competitors, use one of the other competitive RFP rules for | other projects, to use your competitor's RFP, etc. but you | need to make sure the RFP you are running only does what | the competition isn't allowed to do. | aksss wrote: | Having worked with a lot of contracted firms that do | custom software development and platform customization, | let's not put them too high on a pedestal. What money you | save on FTE programmers needs to be funneled right back | into management talent to make sure they deliver a | quality product (high utility, supportable by next | contractor, quality docs, etc). Good management talent is | hard to find and not something any government is known | for. Consequently, next contractor probably has mondo | ramp-up time deciphering what hacked pos the last guys | put in with their c-team developers (cuz margins). | daniel-thompson wrote: | > the employees that end up in those jobs tend to be among | the least skilled and motivated | | This. The job itself is terrible and as you mention the pay | is terrible too. With conditions like that, I'm not | surprised the product is buggy, over-budget, and difficult | to improve. | DaiPlusPlus wrote: | Isn't this what USDS and 18F are for? | mattmcknight wrote: | I thought they were pitched as a service opportunity. | Regardless, it's a small team that only operates at the | federal level, state and local budgets are much more | limited. | | "Salaries at USDS vary, but don't exceed $170,800, | determined by your experience and skills." So, they do | have a relatively low top salary, but it is very | difficult to do any salary for the government based on | skills versus age (disguised as years of experience). At | best you might find adjustments for degrees earned, which | don't translate well to actual value. | [deleted] | lbriner wrote: | Sorry but this is just a question of balance. | | Sure, it sounds like a public-sector employee gives better | value but if you want to produce commercial quality then you | still need management, consultancy and high quality HR with | competitive salaries, otherwise you usually get mediocre | developers with mediocre results. | | Sometimes it really is better to pay a premium on the "day | rate" to get something more quickly and to a higher standard. | You also often have access to better support and maintenance. | | You pays your money and takes your choice. | kingaillas wrote: | >than some state employed software developer. | | Are you willing to pay market rates to retain that developer? | Or deal with the constant churn as people stay long enough to | pad their resume before moving along to the next job? | pmontra wrote: | > the entire inmate management software program, known as ACIS, | has experienced more than 14,000 bugs since it was implemented in | November of 2019. | | It's been about 470 days since then. It means 29 bugs per day. At | least they have in place an impressive process to report and | manage bugs. Or is it 14,000 times the same bug? | TexasfoldsEm wrote: | Wow. I know firsthand from family how this can severely destroy | someone's mental health in what may not be so obvious; it is | extremely heavy on someone every moment past the first hour they | go past their release time, then the first day followed by a | variety of things that will then be taken advantage of by other | inmate and guards while one's defenses are down. The fun poked at | by other jealous inmates and cruel guards constantly will also | weigh down hard on another human being. Arizona penal system puts | you into almost always into very nasty and dangerous places of | incarceration. frompdx made a statement that truly made my gut | feel as if I was at the top of a roller coaster I did not want to | get on in the first place. | WalterBright wrote: | If a prisoner knows he's past his release date, can't he | contact his lawyer? | mulmen wrote: | Depends on if the computer has taken away phone privileges. I | suppose a good lawyer would already know the release date and | take action without being contacted? But I have no idea. | omginternets wrote: | I'm worried this question might get written off. I would | actually like to know the answer to this as well. | | My immediate reaction is that either (1) it is possible, and | the story is therefore more nuanced that might appear at | first glance, or (2) it is not possible, and this is an even | more egregious problem. | mulmen wrote: | The comment that spawned this thread is here and suggests | phone privileges can also be taken away by mistake in this | system: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26227031 | tmsh wrote: | Despite this outrage, what makes this country a sustainable | country is it is a country based on the rule of law. | | There should be a class action lawsuit filed and those who let it | slide should be responsible, including compensation for those | held beyond their sentence / early release. Yes it's easy to say | and there are few champions for prisoners in our society. But it | is how we fix these types of issues (i.e., petitioning for harm | in court), regardless of the origin (software or otherwise). | | Perhaps there should be more class-action lawsuits on behalf of | convicted prisoners in general. | alex_young wrote: | Isn't this clearly defined false imprisonment under Arizona law? | | Here's the relevant statute: | | _13-1303. Unlawful imprisonment; classification; definition | | A. A person commits unlawful imprisonment by knowingly | restraining another person. | | B. In any prosecution for unlawful imprisonment, it is a defense | that: | | 1. The restraint was accomplished by a peace officer or detention | officer acting in good faith in the lawful performance of his | duty; or | | 2. The defendant is a relative of the person restrained and the | defendant's sole intent is to assume lawful custody of that | person and the restraint was accomplished without physical | injury. | | C. Unlawful imprisonment is a class 6 felony unless the victim is | released voluntarily by the defendant without physical injury in | a safe place before arrest in which case it is a class 1 | misdemeanor. | | D. For the purposes of this section, "detention officer" means a | person other than an elected official who is employed by a | county, city or town and who is responsible for the supervision, | protection, care, custody or control of inmates in a county or | municipal correctional institution. Detention officer does not | include counselors or secretarial, clerical or professionally | trained personnel._ | | https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01303.htm | | Assumption being that a detention officer is not acting in good | faith if they have a list of people who should no longer be | detained under state law. | boomboomsubban wrote: | Their list is of people eligible for a program that would give | them an early release, so unless the inmate enrolls the prison | would be acting in good faith. Almost like the law was | intentionally worded to limit their liability. | olingern wrote: | This is one of those "bugs" that is a feature for the prisons. Of | course no one wants this fixed. | | Also, proof that things that are newer aren't better. | | > "We have a couple modules they spent millions of dollars on | that we can't use at all," a department source said. | | > The ACIS software system replaced an older program called AIMS | that had been in operation for more than three decades. | grumple wrote: | I will say that the sum of my misdeeds throughout my life doesn't | compare to depriving a single person of a single day of their | freedom. It's something I think about when I think of politicians | who passed unjust laws, or prosecutors who pursued marijuana | convictions, or judges that condemned the innocent. | | But now I've learned that that could, in fact, be a potential | problem in the future... | bigmattystyles wrote: | With prison incentives being what they are, it's hard not to | think that it's beneficial for the profession to hold on to | inmates longer. | rob74 wrote: | I'm wondering if there isn't a business model in this: couldn't | the inmates (or their families) hire some law firm that | calculates the correct release date and sues the state to get a | hefty compensation for every day the inmates serve longer than | they should? That would turn around the incentives... | xen2xen1 wrote: | Don't ascribe to malice... The dates and sentences can change | so many times it's surprisingly hard to calculate. I've watched | people who try earnestly to get the dates right complain about | how hard it is. | gotostatement wrote: | is there a version of this that says "Dont ascribe to | incompetence what is more likely caused by greed"? I'm tired | of seeing comments like this that imply that any accusation | of greed or malice is unfounded when in todays world, | particularly in an industry like private prisons, greed is | often the _most_ likely cause. | rjurney wrote: | Reminds me of Russia. There's your release date... and then | there's your court date. You aren't released until the court date | after your release date, and without a bribe that could be years. | You might never get out. | | I haven't been there in a while, but this is how it was when I | lived in Moscow. | temporallobe wrote: | I love how "mistakes" are often in your adversary's favor, like | when I canceled a gym membership and they continued to charge me | for a year because of a "glitch". Of course mistakes like these | have nothing to do with software but with intentional policy | decisions which can be made plausibility deniable due to software | bugs. | shobith wrote: | Peak dystopia is close. | frompdx wrote: | This is an outrage. It is also a perfect example of how software | is used to create increasingly more elaborate and faceless | bureaucracies that force individuals to spend more and more time | contending with them. Somehow software has become the ultimate | vehicle for bureaucratic violence. Software is simultaneously | infallible and the perfect scapegoat. The inmate who lost their | phone privileges for 30 days is an example. They did nothing | wrong but the computer says so and nothing can be done. The | computer is right in the sense that its decision cannot be | undone, and solely to blame since no human can undo its edict or | be held accountable, apparently. It is tragic and absurd. | | There was an Ask HN question the other day where the poster asked | if the software we are building is making the world a better | place. There were hardly any replies at all. Is this because for | the most part our efforts in producing software are actually | doing the opposite? It certainly seems that way reading articles | like this. | amelius wrote: | There is plenty of useful software. For example: scientific | software. | frompdx wrote: | That's true, and I am not arguing that useful software does | not exist. Instead, a lot of energy producing software is | often not useful, or useful in perverse ways. | danielnixon wrote: | You might like this | https://www.berglas.org/Articles/ImportantThatSoftwareFails/... | austincheney wrote: | The best solution to the problem is to hold developers | personally liable for the software they write, as well as the | owners. That could mean criminal penalties for negligent | violations of industry standards and processes but will mostly | result in civil penalties. | | The second and third order consequences is that developers will | insulate themselves behind licensing and proofs of practice | like every other industry. | | Until people actually advocate for real penalties for such | harmful violations they don't care. All their temporary whining | and crying is just blowing smoke up our asses. | hodgesrm wrote: | > It is also a perfect example of how software is used to | create increasingly more elaborate and faceless bureaucracies | that force individuals to spend more and more time contending | with them. | | You are attacking the wrong target. It's the government that's | broken. This kind of outrage can happen just as easily with | pencil and paper. The root cause is the lack of accountability | and desire to make the government function better. | frompdx wrote: | Except software allows a scale and efficiency that is | impossible with pencil and paper while also creating an ideal | scapegoat. Software is being used to avoid accountability at | a scale much greater than what was possible with manual | process. | Kinrany wrote: | > Software is being used to avoid accountability | | Right, in the same way knives are used to rob people. | | This is not a new problem: an organization strategically | builds an unmanageable bureacracy and then profits off the | issue while claiming incompetence. | | Computers just make said bureaucracy cheaper to operate. | phone8675309 wrote: | Isn't this the basis of the book "IBM and the Holocaust"[1] | where the author lays out how IBM's technology helped | facilitate the wide scale of Nazi genocide? | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust | Kalium wrote: | The old saw about computers is that they're designed to | allow humans to make millions of mistakes, very quickly and | very accurately. | [deleted] | Tepix wrote: | Corporations have similar issues. Just look at the biased | image recognition technology that FAANG release | underwater wrote: | How is this a government problem? People frequently lose | access to social network accounts and email because of broken | algorithms. Google can blacklist a business and send it | broke. Insurance companies, credit bureaus and banks can make | a wrong decision and deny credit. | hodgesrm wrote: | People decide to fix problems in software or anything else | for that matter. If they don't get fixed it's usually a | matter of somebody (or bodies) decided it was not a | priority. | 1-more wrote: | But they can be undone with pencil and paper too. The footgun | of automation here can only be undone with either a really | good patch (git commit -m 'finally finally works for real | this time') or a lot of pencil and paper work that's slower | than the processes that caused the problem. | | I'll note that this isn't the first time that people have | said "well its the algorithm" when they were responsible. The | example that springs to mind is bail risk assessments. You're | very correct in that there are people making real decisions | that are very cruel here. The machines give them something to | hide behind. | jjoonathan wrote: | Yes. "It's just the algorithm" is the "it's just procedure" | of the 21st century. | majormajor wrote: | The lack of desire to get things right throughout the | bureaucracy is the problem. The software is just a mechanism. | Other organizations that actually care figure out ways to get | things right even when the software has issues. | | You can see in the film Brazil, from 35 years ago, that this | was already a problem and concern even without modern software. | dTal wrote: | Much older than that. The blackly humorous 1965 short story | "Computers Don't Argue" by Gordon R. Dickson is pretty much | the definitive "software as a bureaucracy" story. No spoilers | - it's short and well worth it: | | https://www.atariarchives.org/bcc2/showpage.php?page=133 | 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: | A big problem is that while we might improve the typical use | with software, the failure mode is generally ignored and swept | under the rug. See google's customer service. You can speed up | and improve the average case a thousand times more, driving | costs down by maybe a thousand times, or you can bring costs | down like 2x but keep the benefits of manual, person centric | failure recovery. Even then, non-automation doesn't make it | "human" in the sense we all want. A rep in a call center who is | only allowed to follow the playbook almost might as well be an | automaton for all the freedom they have. Are faceless economies | of scale and the bureaucracies they bring the root issue? | eunos wrote: | I am not sure how software bug is the exclusive enabler since | it is plausible as well for administration bug to occur with | pen and paper along with the compliant warden. | frompdx wrote: | It's not that software is the _exclusive_ enabler. It is that | software is the _ideal_ enabler because of its ability to | create a truly faceless entity that seems to exist outside | the power of even those who administer it. Of course these | issues were always possible without software. Software is | just so much more efficient and useful for creating these | kinds of issues because it can scale and because it can be | the scapegoat. | lbriner wrote: | Software that infringes on the public (even if they are | criminals) as opposed to software that people can opt to use or | not, needs to have a very serious question asked at design | time: If the software produces an incorrect result, what | mechanism exists to override it/audit it/provide damages etc. | | The fact people are not asking that is worrying. I understand | why the system was not designed to do something that happened | later (even if it could have been reasonably foreseen) but the | fact that it was implemented with no override is really the | scandal. | | I don't know whether this comes down to an amount of power that | exists in a Governor that means the rest of the organisation | can't say, "sorry Guv, but we can't do this because the | software wasn't written to". If TV is to be believed, Governors | want things done yesterday and you worry about the problems. | frompdx wrote: | I have a very cynical take. Probably too cynical. The ability | to shift blame to software as opposed to the humans | responsible for administering a bureaucracy is exactly what | makes it so appealing. The question is ignored intentionally. | marmaduke wrote: | Not cynical enough: if private prisons with a profit motive | delay prisoner release, they've made more money. | blackgirldev wrote: | That was my first thought actually. We are probably not | cynical enough! In addition to blame shifting, the prison | industrial complex is benefitting from having the prisoners | stay longer, so there is zero incentive to fix the problem. | Enginerrrd wrote: | As someone with a civil engineering background: | | This right here is the difference between conventional | engineering disciplines where designs require a Stamp from an | Engineer of Record who takes on personal responsibility in | the event of design failures vs. the current discipline of | software engineering. | | There's a big difference between a software developer and a | software engineer, and I think that difference should be | codified with a licensure and a stamp like it is in every | other engineering field in the states. | | Software like this ought to require a stamp. | | A decent analogy is the environmental work I've done. When we | come up with solutions and mitigations to environmental | problems, like software, we can't always predict the result | because of the complexities involved. So we stamp a design, | but we, or the agencies responsible for allowing the project | often specify additional monitoring or other stipulations | with very specific performance guidelines. It's a flexible | system and possible to adapt to, but there are real | consequences and fines when targets aren't met. When bad | things happen, the specifics of what went wrong and why are | very relevant and the engineer may be to blame, or the | owner/site manager, or the contractor who did the work, or | sometimes no one is to be blamed but the agencies are able to | say: "Hey this isn't working and needs to be addressed, do it | by this date or else." | | In engineering, there's an enormous amount of public trust | given to engineered designs. The engineer takes personal | responsibility for that public trust that a building or | bridge isn't going to fall down. And if you're negligent, | it's a BFD. | | Given the current level of public trust that we are putting | into software systems, it's crazy to me that we haven't | adopted a similar system. | aksss wrote: | > additional monitoring or other stipulations | | That does happen with software a lot, frequently flying | under the title of Compensating User Entity Controls | (CUECs) or User Control Considerations (UCC). Basically the | "here it is, don't feed it after midnight and don't let it | get wet, and good luck" riders. Sounds like these problems | happened way earlier in the lifecycle though - either the | requirements were missed or the testing was thorough | enough. | mewpmewp2 wrote: | Software is completely different from your typical other | engineering fields. You just can't apply the same | methodology there. In other fields such as building bridges | you are quite often taking what has already been proven to | work well and building it, while in software if you start | to repeat yourself you are doing things wrong. | jfengel wrote: | I would love for software engineering as a discipline to go | that way, but it's going to be very hard. Software usually | has more moving parts than hardware. | | I don't mean to understate the difficulty of being a | hardware engineer, of any sort. But the whole reason we do | things in software at all is because software is more | flexible, and adding a new thing comes with less overhead. | Hardware, while challenging, tends to follow similar sets | of solutions to similar problems. There are only so many | things a bridge, or a building, or even a CPU will be | tasked to do. | | Not saying this is impossible for software, either. | Software gets built for man-rated tasks -- and jobs like | this should be considered man-rated, because lives depend | on it. That means it's going to cost more and take longer, | especially when it's software of a kind nobody has ever | built before. Who has experience in "software that releases | prisoners?" | | The reason they don't do that is, therefore, money. I doubt | the prison system is willing to pay 10x as much for the | software. The software was probably built by the lowest | bidder technically acceptable, where "technically | acceptable" was incredibly flexible because nobody really | knew what had to be done. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > The computer is right in the sense that its decision cannot | be undone, and solely to blame since no human can undo its | edict or be held accountable, apparently. | | This is why penalties are such an important part of the | feedback loop. Obviously we can't go back in time and restore | someone's phone privileges, but we can award monetary damages | for the mistake. | | Monetary damages alone won't discourage this behavior, though, | as ultimately taxpayers foot the bill. There also must be some | degree of accountability for those in charge of the system. | Software can't become a tool for dodging accountability. Those | in charge of implementing the software, providing the inputs, | and managing the outputs must be held accountable for related | mistakes. | | > There was an Ask HN question the other day where the poster | asked if the software we are building is making the world a | better place. There were hardly any replies at all. | | Few Ask HN questions get many responses. This is also a loaded | question, as HN is notorious for nit-picking every response and | putting too much emphasis on the downsides. For example, I know | farmers who have increased their farm productivity massively | using modern hardware and software. However, if I posted that | it would inevitably draw concerns about replacing human jobs, | right-to-repair issues, and other issues surrounding the space. | The world is definitely better off for having more efficient | and productive farming techniques, freeing most of us up to do | things other than farm. | | However, all new advances bring a different set of problems. | Instead of trying to force everything into broad categories of | _better_ or _worse_ I think it 's important to acknowledge that | technology makes the world _different_. Different is a | combination of better and worse. The modern world has different | problems than we did 100 years ago, but given the choice I | wouldn 't choose to roll back to the pre-computer era. | | > It certainly seems that way reading articles like this. | | Both news and social media have a strong bias toward articles | that spark anger or outrage. For me, the whole world stops | feeling like a dumpster fire when I disconnect from news and | social media for a while. I'm looking forward to the post-COVID | era where we can get back to interacting with each other in | person rather than gathering around a constant stream of | negative stories on social media. | frompdx wrote: | _Both news and social media have a strong bias toward | articles that spark anger or outrage._ | | Absolutely, and I agree that disconnecting can have positive | benefits. On the other hand, at least for me personally, | covid has disrupted the mechanisms that normally prevent in | depth observation. It has given me time to read books I | normally would not have read because that time went to things | like waiting for my car to warm up so I can get to work on | time, commuting, going out to lunch with co-workers, and | going out for drinks with co-workers, friends, and family. | | What is described in the article _is_ outrageous. My concerns | about bureaucracy and software 's role in enabling it, on the | other hand, have developed separately because I have the time | to consider it. | pm90 wrote: | Software is just a tool, it can be used to build good or bad | things. | | It would be hard to see this in e.g. Scandinavian countries, | where incarceration is seen as rehabilitative rather than | punitive. | | In the US, racial discrimination, free market extremism along | with "tough on crime" laws have created unimaginably cruel | systems; together with private prisons, the goal has been on | cutting costs rather than rehabilitating prisoners. Software is | just a tool to further that goal. | P_I_Staker wrote: | Is rehabilitation not the main goal in the USA? We call the | places correctional facilities, and do other things that are | ostensibly there to correct behavior and prevent recidivism. | In fact, it seems like most of the things that prevent people | from being successful are unintended side effects. | | Here's a thought: Why do we permit private companies to not | hire ex-cons? Why do you just get to decide that you don't | want to hold up your civic responsibilities like that? Who | wants to work with someone that used to be violent maniac, | sleazy thief, or worse? | | I agree about cost cutting measures and the criminal justice | industrial complex. Still we have bigger issues around crime | and reconciliation that prevent us from making progress. To | be honest, I have trouble understanding how we're going to | change, unless the average person can live with someone | ruining their life, then spending "only" a year or so in | prison and moving on to be successful in a decent paying job. | | We still find that outrageous in the US, and it's going to be | very tough to make progress that way. It's not about making | something "a goal", especially in a country like the US, it's | about convincing the wealthy and powerful class to do | anything at all about it and stop making it worse. | rhino369 wrote: | We pretend the goal is rehabilitation, but its obviously | not. | | I don't really think any justice system is actually putting | rehabilitation first. Otherwise, you'd be sentenced to | "until you get rehabilitated or no more than X years." | frompdx wrote: | Indeed, software is an enabling technology and is morally | ambivalent just like any other tool. A machine tool can make | a medical device to save lives or military device to destroy | lives. At the heart of the issue is the intricate web of | institutional mouse traps designed to convert low stakes | issues into serious offenses. For example, a person who does | does respond to a citation for expired vehicle tags is now | ensured in a mechanism that turns a minor issue related to | tax collection into a real criminal offense. It is up to | humans to make these things so. | | I brought up the Ask HN question mostly because I felt the | lack of replies were a silent acknowledgement of the | realities of most software endeavors. That they are not | making the world a better place. Most aren't going out of | their way to make it worse. Probably, it isn't even a | consideration. | jerry1979 wrote: | I don't think tools cancel themselves out, and I suspect that | nothing "is just" anything. | | Even if ideas like "the medium is the message" are partially | true and then just partially applicable, that should give us | pause when we try to cross out tools in our morality | equations. | | - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message | bitL wrote: | > if the software we are building is making the world a better | place | | No, it's now all about "extracting value", "rent seeking", | "subscriptions", "censorship", "monopoly" and "control". We got | bribed by FAANG and this is the consequence. | rectang wrote: | > _making the world a better place_ | | For a large segment of the US electorate, anything that | inflicts pain on "bad people" _is_ "making the world a better | place". | | If the software was causing prisoners to be released _early_ , | most US voters would be up in arms. But if they're being held | too long, the calculus is different. In software terms, for | many Americans, a "tough on crime" outcome is a "feature not a | bug". | asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: | > Is this because for the most part our efforts in producing | software are actually doing the opposite? It certainly seems | that way reading articles like this. | | I think the most likely explanation is just that people didn't | see the question or weren't interested in having the | discussion. Most people believe the work they're doing is at | worst neutral. A less likely candidate for the reason (but | still more likely than your guess) is that people didn't want | to be subjected to unfounded criticism of their work from | people who don't know anything about it. | bondolo wrote: | Little Britain's recurring bit Computer says "No", has always | been a great illustration of this point. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n_Ty_72Qds | malandrew wrote: | > The inmate who lost their phone privileges for 30 days is an | example. They did nothing wrong but the computer says so and | nothing can be done. The computer is right in the sense that | its decision cannot be undone, and solely to blame since no | human can undo its edict or be held accountable, apparently. It | is tragic and absurd. | | All government software should be open source and anyone should | be able to investigate the code and submit bug reports, | including inmates. If they know there is something wrong, they | have a lot of time on their hands to learn a useful skill to | fix these issues. | | The government should then not be allowed to close a bug as | wontfix or invalid without approval from other citizen | watchdogs verifying if a bug report is legitimate. | frompdx wrote: | I agree with what you are proposing in principle. However, | the notion that it is up to each individual to combat the | system when it has wronged them while they languish in some | kind of bureaucratic limbo is one of the core sicknesses of | our system. Apart from having direct access to the source | code and the ability to make pull requests, that is exactly | what is happening here. The bureaucrats involved know there | is a problem but are leaving it up to individual inmates and | their advocates, both inside and outside the system, to sort | it out. | malandrew wrote: | > However, the notion that it is up to each individual to | combat the system when it has wronged them while they | languish in some kind of bureaucratic limbo is one of the | core sicknesses of our system. | | What's the alternative though? No human system I'm aware of | can address this in any cost-effective manner. Linus' Law | has been demonstrated as being one of the best human | approaches. The only software approach I can think of that | has addressed this is fault tolerant voting systems used in | avionics (NASA, SpaceX, Boing) where the cost of failure is | so high that typically three independent implementations | vote on the outcome. It's impractical to treat every | software system used in government to be built to the same | standard. | | Even in some of the better run software companies (e.g. | Google and Facebook), it's incredibly challenging to | achieve system correctness across the entire system. There | are always tradeoffs to be made and even in the most | critical systems there are limits to how to practically | achieve correctness. | | I work at one of these better run companies specifically on | measuring and guaranteeing correctness and detecting | failures in correctness both in production systems (via | continuous probing) and as part of change management | (integration testing the change against the system in | production). It's a really hard problem even for us and we | have far better engineers than you find working on the | overwhelming majority of government software systems. | | The only alternative (and the one I prefer) is to have less | government involvement so that fewer systems are involved | and you can have more eyeballs scrutinizing fewer systems. | Government is far too big already, and there's too strong a | desire to keep making it bigger before we adequately tame | the complexity we've already built. The co-dependence | between two codifications: (1) the law code and (2) | software code, further contributes to ossification that is | almost impossible to undo. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_law | alephnil wrote: | Yes, software can be used as a cover for abuse like in this | case, but that happens because some people in power let it | happen. For other pieces of software that have consequences for | people with more power than prisoners, the society will not | allow failures to happen. I only need to mention the MCAS | software of Boeing 737 Max for a counterexample. | | Software does not have its own will. Software is only allowed | to make decisions on our behalf because we let it do so. | frompdx wrote: | It is interesting that you bring up the 737 Max. I was | actually talking the 737 Max in the context of software being | both infallible and the perfect scapegoat with someone last | week. The 737 Max is an example of how software was believed | to be infallible (it wasn't) and was ultimately the scapegoat | for a design flaw. That doesn't mean the 737 Max was | something that happened intentionally. However, when the time | came to assign blame fingers began pointing at the software. | | I do agree that software has no will. It is a tool for | facilitating our will for better or worse. | mattmcknight wrote: | I dropped this in a comment elsewhere in this discussion, but | also makes sense here... | | I find the government "requirements" process tends to create | situations like this. Rather than build flexible software that | puts some degree of trust in the person using it, they tend to | overspecify the current bureaucratic process. In many cases, | the person pushing for the software is looking to use software | to enforce bureaucratic control that they have been unable to | otherwise exercise, with the effect of the people the project | initiator wants to use the software simply working around it. | They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls to | insure it must be used. This then results in the kind of insane | situation we have here, where you can't do something perfectly | legal because "computer says no". | indymike wrote: | In this case, the requirements should be as simple as | implement the law. | carlmr wrote: | Implementing the law, especially in a common law country | like the US is really difficult. The case law that is of | primary importance here is often contradictory and fuzzy, | as well as changing constantly. In addition the written law | doesn't capture the whole situation. | | In a civil law system it's more likely achievable, but I'm | quite sure the requirements aren't that clear cut judging | from the text. | aksss wrote: | Well, there's the law (federal, state, etc), then the | additional regulatory rulings (federal, state, etc), then | the as-applied department policies. Not really a lack of | "law" but a _mess_ of constraints that need to be | deciphered into functional requirements with footnotes, | matrixed to testing and preserved /maintained for the | next guy. Ugh.. I want to charge the gov. 2k hrs for just | thinking about it today. | throwaway8581 wrote: | Civil law codes are often just as ambiguous as common law | systems. The only difference is that in a civil law | system, you can't firmly rely on precedent, so a judge | can interpret the law against you just because he doesn't | like you, even in the face of contrary precedent. | | That's in part why international business to business | contracts almost always specify a common law jurisdiction | as the required venue for any lawsuits. | spaetzleesser wrote: | That's as insightful as people saying " just follow the | constitution" when in reality people have been fighting | about the exact meaning for centuries. Most laws leave some | room for interpretation. This is pretty much necessary | because the law can't specify each corner case. | | Same goes for software requirements. Good requirements make | the intent clear but allow implementers some flexibility. | Specifying everything in minute detail is usually a recipe | for disaster. | pmontra wrote: | 16 months is a long time, especially when people are in | jail and they should not be there. However in my experience | as software developer nothing is simple, but everything can | be done. | | First problem coming to my mind: do they have the budget to | pay the software developers to add this new functionality | to the software? Do they have to ask the money to someone | else, maybe to the very politicians that changed the | requirement? | | Then when this is settled there are the usual problems of | analysis and implementation. Probably also where to get | that input that they didn't have before. It could be a | large project. But 16 months, ouch. | vntok wrote: | Implementing "the law" is anything and everything but | simple. | AdrianB1 wrote: | "Implement the law" in a software product is as utopian as | replacing judges with computers that "implement the law". | Now does it makes sense why it is not possible? | indymike wrote: | Perhaps software isn't the right place to implement the | law? | frompdx wrote: | _the person pushing for the software is looking to use | software to enforce bureaucratic control that they have been | unable to otherwise exercise_ | | This is frequently my observation as well. In the process of | creating stricter control the bureaucrat increases the the | power of their bureaucracy while shifting the blame for any | problems to a faceless entity. | | _They then institute all sorts of punishments and controls | to insure it must be used._ | | This leads me to one of my primary frustrations with the | bureaucratization of our lives. Severe consequences are | attached to low stakes situations and rational individuals | who see the harm caused by the situation are rendered | powerless to make changes. | panic wrote: | _> Severe consequences are attached to low stakes | situations and rational individuals who see the harm caused | by the situation are rendered powerless to make changes._ | | You can see the process at work within this very thread -- | _" And within that chain, there should be legal recourse | and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in the | case of inadequate software quality/testing/validation, | should the software fail to perform its task correctly."_ | (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26228195) | | People seem unable to imagine any way to improve things | except by adding more and more legal consequences. We need | to stop doing this! | frompdx wrote: | This is an excellent observation about the process of | bureaucratization in action. For some reason the solution | to the failings of bureaucracy ends up being even more | bureaucracy and even greater consequences for failing to | play by the rules of the bureaucracy. | | Is bureaucracy like violence? If it isn't working you | aren't using enough of it? | panic wrote: | Yeah, it's tempting to imagine that all the problems in | the world can be solved in the same kind of way, whether | through more bureaucracy or more violence. Another | example is the libertarian idea that all problems can be | solved through the application of market forces. Maybe | the general term for this is solutionism -- the idea that | problems have "solutions" which take certain standard | forms, when really these problems are the natural result | of various patterns of human activity which may or may | not respond to the "solution" you chose. In the worst | case, you can end up in a sort of feedback loop, where an | earlier "solution" was actually the cause of the problem | that justifies the next "solution" and so on. | frompdx wrote: | Solutionism seems like an apt term. In addition, | solutionists may feel bound to their ideology and unable | to see problems caused by their solutions for what they | are leading the types of feedback loops you describe. | People double down on their beliefs when presented with | opposing viewpoints or even contrary evidence all of the | time. Interesting observation. | malandrew wrote: | > In the process of creating stricter control the | bureaucrat increases the the power of their bureaucracy | while shifting the blame for any problems to a faceless | entity. | | They are basically using software to preserve the problem | to which they are the solution. i.e. the shirky principle | | https://kk.org/thetechnium/the-shirky-prin/ | mewpmewp2 wrote: | I'd argue that software like this has saved people from having | to do millions of years worth of mundane work. This news is | essentially like a traffic accident. Doesn't mean vehicles in | general haven't benefitted the human experience. The fact that | it is news worthy is evidence that it doesn't happen too often. | dustingetz wrote: | software is a tool used by people. You are measuring America. | davidkhess wrote: | What if the root cause is the ever increasing complexity that | software is trying to manage? At all levels (legislature, | management, bureaucrats, programming languages, developers, | testers, users, subjects) we are creating more and more complex | situations we ask software and the institutions that produce it | to manage for us. | | But as the complexity goes up and the number of these complex | situations increases, are we reaching a point where we outstrip | the amount of money, talent and experience our institutions | would need to deliver solutions to successfully manage them? | | With our resources and intelligence as a species being capped, | it seems at some point this is inevitable. | dimitrios1 wrote: | We know exactly how to fix it. Our cowardly politicians and | toothless regulatory agencies are not up for the challenge. | | For every piece of software that can directly and materially | harm someone's life like this, there should be a chain of | responsibility. And within that chain, there should be legal | recourse and, in most cases, penal consequences, especially in | the case of inadequate software quality/testing/validation, | should the software fail to perform its task correctly. Bonus | side effect, software quality will go up across the board in | the industry. | raymondh wrote: | > And within that chain, there should be legal > recourse | and, in most cases, penal consequences, | | Wikipedia says, "Under common law, false imprisonment is both | a crime and a tort". | throwaway8581 wrote: | It's not the software makers who are committing the crimes. | It's the people abdicating responsibility to software. You | can't wipe your hands of releasing a prisoner on schedule by | delegation that to software. The software can help you with | your task, but if it's brought to your attention that there's | a mistake, your failure to promptly fix it is on you. | Tepix wrote: | It's both. Look at the amount of unnecessary waste created | by the abysmal Android update policy. | JustSomeNobody wrote: | > Our cowardly politicians and toothless regulatory agencies | are not up for the challenge. | | Because their constituents want people to be punished and if | the inmates have to suffer a little extra so be it, "they | shouldn't have committed a crime." | | Our society is severely lacking in empathy. | P_I_Staker wrote: | Or things don't get much better, and management finds a way | to make it someone else's problem. Do you think it's the CEO | or the people making these decisions that will be locked up? | We'll just be arresting whatever yes men show up to be the | pawn in the stupid game someone else architected. | | More people working with a gun to their head. I'd rather the | gun be pointed at the person who already has a gun pointed at | me, instead of both barrels facing in my direction. | daanlo wrote: | Imho that wouldn't cause quality to go up. It would just make | it more expensive to develop and to fix bugs. Even more cover | your ass would go on. | | Or at least a huge share of that burden needs to be on the | client so that they define and then test and control the SW | they receive properly. | | The problems with the software sound like typical big | software project problems. Trying to cover a huge breadth of | use cases with lots of very important tiny details and | released in a big bang (one migration). It sounds like more | of a project mgmt problem than a software problem to me. | | But maybe I am just a hammer and see nails everywhere. | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | The politicians and toothlessness of the regulatory agencies | is a direct result of the electorate. The electorate likes | these sorts of outcomes, and any politician that goes against | them will find themselves either primaried or drummed out of | office. | pc86 wrote: | At what point do you feel the developers - the ones who | actually wrote the code - should be held legally responsible | for that code's execution? | [deleted] | platinumrad wrote: | This headlining issue is a specification change and it is | an administrative rather than an engineering failure to | knowingly rely on outdated software. The article also | refers to other software problems but in scenarios like | this the people who write the code (as well as the people | who operate it, such as corrections department IT staff) | tend to have no decision making power whatsoever: | | >"It was Thanksgiving weekend," one source recalled. "We | were killing ourselves working on it, but every person | associated with the software rollout begged (Deputy | Director) Profiri not to go live." | bendbro wrote: | Nobody will take that contract. Any mistake in the government | specifying what they want you to build can be politically | manipulated into a legal matter with some probability you'll | end up in prison. | AdrianB1 wrote: | Not at all: any mistake in the government specifications is | the government's problem. If you have requirements and a | requirement tracing matrix to deliverables and you deliver | what is required, you are good. | | But usually in most parts of the world these government | contracts are intentionally made ambiguous for so many | reasons including corruption and incompetence of the people | writing requirements. | carlmr wrote: | Maybe every contract like this should be programmed to the | same API twice. Then you could at least compare it the two | pieces of software agree. You check the disagrees and get the | companies to fix them (should be part of the contract). | | And don't tell me you can't buy two CRUD applications for 24 | million dollars. It's a silly amount of money for such a | buggy application. | rjurney wrote: | There is a chain. There is legal recourse. And there are | considerations in government IT that you would not believe | and they are incredibly difficult to deal with on minimal | resources. It _has_ to be harder than the private sector and | this application isn 't any different than buggy mainframe | software run by major banks. It sits and gets crufty. | foerbert wrote: | This is a new system that replaced a previous one not that | long ago. This isn't some crazy old thing running COBAL on | a VAX somewhere that nobody understands anymore. | aksss wrote: | I have no idea what that means, for newer is not | necessarily more supportable. Who knows what the system | is - maybe they had a multi-million dollar SAP | implementation to manage prisons, and now you're looking | for functional support of that platform after it was | customized all to hell, you need a-team SAP resources, | not the new kid at Wipro... I can only imagine what's | behind that curtain. It's the government so I imagine the | worst. | Spooky23 wrote: | The old COBOL crap is more likely to have been | implemented by someone with a clue. | | The "new" systems are usually aping the old system | behavior. In one case, I ran into a system where some | company converted COBOL transactions into Java with some | sort of automated tool to put the legacy system "on the | internet". | RHSeeger wrote: | It will never be the case that software will be perfect. We | can get closer and closer, but the closer we are the more | expensive the next step in closing the gap is. | | While I do agree that making software better/more reliable is | a good goal, I believe we would be better off making the | system as a whole more robust; the system that includes | humans. For every situation where a piece of software has | control of something that effects society (individual, group, | etc), there should always be a clear and direct means of | appealing / pushing back on the decision that was made. Those | means should involve a human reviewing the information and | making a decision based on that information, not on what the | computer said. There's thread after thread of us saying the | exact same thing about companies like Google and Facebook; it | should apply as a general rule. | extropy wrote: | There is no such thing as perfect software when | requirements change with time. We need adaptable software | instead. | | Like all our governance mechanisms have a built-in system | of constant change. | josephg wrote: | I agree with other commenters. And I think another part of | the problem is the consumer model of software. In a pen and | paper system if there was some reason why a record was | special or different from the others, you could just attach | a note to it and the next person who picked up the record | could read your note. Custom software systems deny that | sort of ad-hoc flexibility from the people using them. | There's no way to do anything that wasn't planned for and | programmed in. So office workers who use flows managed by | custom software are actively disempowered from authorship | over their own workflows. | | That's one of the reasons I think Excel (and tools like | Notion) are so popular - the people on the ground can learn | to express themselves in the full context of the tools. I | think this sort of software is far more important than we | give it credit for. (It's an invisible problem to us, | because we can change the software.) | rowanG077 wrote: | No one is arguing that software must be perfect. But we | aren't really even trying. Most software is written in | extremely error prone languages without adequate testing. | | You don't hear anyone saying we should throw out finite- | element analyses and other computational verification | methods when designing bridges because bridges can never be | perfectly secure. Yet that is exactly the sentiment I often | hear on software. | Aerroon wrote: | Are bridges and software comparable in complexity though? | How many engineers work on designing a bridge compared to | software developers that are writing a program? There are | more than an order of magnitude more software developers | in the US than civil engineers. | | Now think about the state of US infrastructure. Does it | inspire confidence for the future? | rowanG077 wrote: | I'd say a lot of software is comparable in complexity to | the large bridges that exist. Of course there are massive | software projects that dwarf any bridge ever build. But a | lot of software is only moderately complex. | | I don't know about infrastructure in the US. I don't live | there. I'm happy with the infrastructure in west Europe | though. I wish that much care was put in to the software | I use every day. | frompdx wrote: | My cynical take is that the lack of accountability is exactly | what makes software enabled bureaucracy so appealing. If this | true, there is no incentive to change. | spaetzleesser wrote: | This is part of it. Otherwise it's just way cheaper to run | a faceless bureaucracy that sometimes throws people under | the bus when a mistake has been made. | rbanffy wrote: | It's a cost/benefit analysis. They'll be taken to court by | a few inmates, have to pay them or settle out of court and | bill the government for their stays. Since everything is a | matter of money, what the company will do is what brings | them the most profit after they paid their legal bills. | | It seems keeping inmates longer pays better than releasing | them on time. | rsj_hn wrote: | > _We know exactly how to fix it. Our cowardly politicians | and toothless regulatory agencies are not up for the | challenge. For every piece of software that can directly and | materially harm someone 's life like this, there should be a | chain of responsibility._ | | No, you know how to blame people and punish people, but that | doesn't mean you know how to deliver custom bespoke software | for a price that the various government agencies can afford | which doesn't have bugs that severely hurt peoples lives. | | In fact, punishing people is not going to accomplish that. | | That's the problem with a legislature that thinks it can pass | any law it wants - let's take into account this new variable | X that our software has no way of collecting or measuring - | without looking at the feasibility of actually implementing | the law given the infrastructure available, and without | approving a corresponding budget for software upgrades to | actually enact the law, and taking into account how much time | it would take to write, test, deploy, and then train people | to use the new software instead of just issuing streams of | mandates like Emperor Norton and expecting the mandates to | materialize into existence like the morning dew. And if said | morning dew does not appear, then we can punish and sue the | people in charge when they tell us there is no way they can | do what we are asking them. | | Of course there is blame on the prison leadership for | covering things up and that leadership should be fired, but | you can punish and sue people all day long and it's not going | to result in any good code being written. Punish enough | people, and it will just result in the Law being repealed. | | The problem with this type of bespoke code is that it has | exactly 1 customer, so it's going to be horrendously | expensive while also being buggy and quickly thrown together | compared to software whose development costs are leveraged | over millions of customers. And then what happens next year | when some crusader decides that they need to take some other | new variable into account? Constantly changing requirements, | underspecified projects, one-off projects whose schedules are | impossible to estimate, and cash strapped local governments. | Yeah, that's a recipe for success. | | This is why everyone hates enterprise software, but even | enterprise software has tens of thousands of customers. | Bespoke software for the Arizona prison system -- forget it. | kingaillas wrote: | Yeah but the cost of that chain will also rise. | | If I'm (or my company is) personally on the hook for bugs, | then I'm going to adopt a NASA-like software quality regimen, | pushing up the cost of the product. | | Every single part of the software stack below me, from | hardware, OS, compiler toolchain, disavows responsibility so | if I have to absorb all the risk, the product is going to be | mind bogglingly expensive. | Draiken wrote: | I have to say that sounds exactly how this kind of software | should be built. | | We're not talking about the newest social media hype. This | software actually matters. Specially since today most of | these bureaucratic processes can't be done without these | softwares. | throwaway0a5e wrote: | >I have to say that sounds exactly how this kind of | software should be built. | | You see this in every topic. | | Every "muh pride in muh trade" person says something like | this about the relevant trade but the fact of the matter | is that the world runs on off-brand duct tape, harbor | freight tools, walmart jeans, economy tires, and all | sorts of other "value" solutions and the race to the | bottom is what has given us much of the modern world that | we take for granted. | | A balance needs to be struck. And it generally needs to | be struck further toward the "quickly and cheaply build | it like crap but make it easy to override or reset" | portion of the available solution space than anyone | pontificating about quality on the internet will readily | admit. | handoflixue wrote: | We don't say "perfection is impossible" when it comes to | bridges collapsing. We understand that yes, on rare | occasion a bridge WILL collapse, but we go and find the | people responsible, and we still hold them accountable. | | This is a level of accountability that basically every | other field of engineering is held to, and they've all | risen to the challenge and left the "off-brand duct tape" | behind. | | Even within programming, planes don't fall out of the sky | daily, so I feel safe assume the aerospace programmers | are comfortable working with a high degree of | responsibility. High speed traders are dealing with | million-dollar stakes and a single mistake can make the | news. I'd expect they've got a very accountable culture | where people get fired when that happens. | | There are costs, yes, but there's also costs to keep 733 | people illegally imprisoned - we're talking two man-years | of peoples lives lost every DAY this goes on. | Aerroon wrote: | Why not hold the people accountable that deployed the | tool? Ultimately the tool _helps_ a human do the job. It | doesn 't do anything on its own. If a contractor shows up | to do repairs in your house, but their hammer is faulty | and the head flies through your window you don't talk to | the hammer manufacturer. You talk to the contractor. It's | the contractor's job to deal with wherever they got the | hammer from. | | If software developers are held responsible for the | software then expect costs to multiply. Nobody would | directly sell you software either - they'd sell you a | hardware and software bundle that you must use _exactly_ | as the developers say. If you input a value that 's out | of bounds then that's on you. The software also won't get | updates and it will run on 20 year old hardware. That's | not too dissimilar to what we have in aerospace, right? | And developers aren't even held responsible there! It's | the companies, so expect it to be worse than even that. | underwater wrote: | Would you blame the people who paid for the bridge for | the collapse? Should they have understood the details and | flagged where corners were cut. | | When it comes to critical system I think it's fair to say | that the engineers who build it are the only ones who can | fully understand the risk. | | This is the point behind accreditation. It forces the | supplier to maintain a minimum bar for services to | protect the reputation of the industry. | vinger wrote: | In real life the engineers don't police themselves. | | Before a bridge, house or even patio deck with a | foundation is used a safety inspector needs to give | approval. | aksss wrote: | > the world runs on off-brand duct tape | | So very, very true. | AdrianB1 wrote: | It is already costing as it should have that level of | quality - a 24 million dollar system should be hard to | justify that cost. | | The other option is to accept we have mediocre software | that creates a number of problems that we are willing to | accept; NO, not when people's lives are at stake. | malka wrote: | Good, this is precisely the objective. | ryanong wrote: | that doesn't sound bad to me if we are dealing with | people's life or people's freedoms | varenc wrote: | If there's penal consequences for bad software, you can bet | that the development cost will easily 10x overnight. | oftenwrong wrote: | Is there a better option? This is software that has to 100% | work in order to be trusted. If the software cannot be | trusted, additional process has to fill in to verify the | decisions the software is making. There's no way to deliver | a good solution cheaply. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | All software has bugs. This is the mantra we are taught | and for a good reason. | | The answer is human oversight. | TedDoesntTalk wrote: | I wouldn't work on such software. | dimitrios1 wrote: | You would for 10x the salary. | [deleted] | rectang wrote: | > _cowardly politicians_ | | They aren't cowardly; they are responding rationally to a | constituency that hates "criminals". Prioritizing fixing | discriminatory systems (such as this software, or "stop and | frisk", or the death penalty) is bad electoral politics for | "tough on crime" politicians. | whack wrote: | The following is very illuminating: | | > _Instead of fixing the bug, department sources said employees | are attempting to identify qualifying inmates manually... But | sources say the department isn't even scratching the surface of | the entire number of eligible inmates. "The only prisoners that | are getting into programming are the squeaky wheels," a source | said, "the ones who already know they qualify or people who | have family members on the outside advocating for them."_ | | > _In the meantime, Lamoreaux confirmed the "data is being | calculated manually and then entered into the system." | Department sources said this means "someone is sitting there | crunching numbers with a calculator and interpreting how each | of the new laws that have been passed would impact an inmate." | "It makes me sick," one source said, noting that even the most | diligent employees are capable of making math errors that could | result in additional months or years in prison for an inmate. | "What the hell are we doing here? People's lives are at | stake."_ | | Comments like yours seem to glorify a pre-software world filled | with manual entry. The reality is that manual entry is even | more error-prone, bias-prone, with more people falling through | the cracks. | | If nothing else, software can be uniformly applied at a mass | scale, and audited for any and all bugs. And faulty software | can be exposed through leaks like the above, to expose and fix | systemic problems. Whereas a world of manual entry simply | ignores vast numbers of errors and biases which are extremely | hard to detect/prove, and even then, can simply be scapegoated | with some unlucky individuals, without any effort to fix | systemically. | derefr wrote: | The "right" bureaucratic system isn't one with humans doing | calculations (which we're bad at); nor is it one where | computers on their own make decisions (which _they 're_ | bad/inflexible at.) | | Instead, it's one where computers do calculations but _don | 't_ make decisions; and then humans _look_ at those | calculations and have a final say (and responsibility!) over | inputting a _decision_ into the computer in response to the | _calculations_ the computer did, _plus_ any other qualitative | raw data factors that are human-legible but machine-illegible | (e.g. the "special requests" field on your pizza order.) | | Governments already _know_ how to design human-computer | systems this way; that knowledge is just not evenly | distributed. This is, for example, how military drone | software works: the robot computes a target lock and says "I | can shoot that if you tell me to"; the human operator makes | the decision of whether to _grant authorization_ to shoot; | the robot, with authorization, then computes _when_ is best | to shoot, and shoots at the optimal time (unless | authorization is revoked before that happens.) A human | operator somewhere nevertheless bears final responsibility | for each shot fired. The human is in _command_ of the | software, just as they would be in command of a platoon of | infantrymen. | | You know policy/mechanism separation? For bureaucratic | processes, _mechanism_ is generally fine to automate 100%. | But, at the point where _policy_ is computed, you can gain a | lot by ensuring that the computed policy goes through a final | predicate-function workflow-step defined as "show a human my | work and my proposed decision, and then return _their_ | decision. " | kodah wrote: | > and responsibility! | | You won't get this though. If the machines are the only | ones capable of making the calculations with less error | then a human can only validate higher level criteria. | Things like "responsibility" and "accountability" become | very vague words in these scenarios, so be specific. | | A human should be able to trace calculations software makes | through auditing. The software will need to be good at | indicating what needs auditing and what doesn't for the | sake of time and effort. You'll probably also need a way | for inmates to start an auditing process. | oconnor663 wrote: | I think "human in loop" designs are a good idea at a high | level, but a big practical problem you run into when you | try to build them is that the humans tend to become | dependent on the computers. For example, you could say this | is what happened when the self-driving Uber test vehicle | killed a pedestrian in 2018. Complacency and (if it's a | full-time job) boredom become major challenges in these | designs. | xapata wrote: | > humans look at those calculations and have a final say | (and responsibility!) over inputting a decision into the | computer in response to the calculations the computer did, | plus any other qualitative raw data factors that are human- | legible but machine-illegible (e.g. the "special requests" | field on your pizza order.) | | Or, have the computer make decisions when there aren't any | "special requests" fields to look at, and have outlier | configurations routed to humans. Humans shouldn't need to | make every decision in a high-volume system. Computers | think in binary, but your design doesn't have to. | brundolf wrote: | The way I see it, one aspect of this is software literacy. | The bureaucrats would only be doing the task by hand instead | of fixing the bug (or even cobbling together a more basic | automation! Excel could probably get them most of the way | there) if they are a) unable to do it themselves, and b) | can't/don't want to pay an expert to do it. | | We can no longer afford to partition the people who | understand/use business logic from the people who turn it | into code and maintain that code. Period. It's ridiculous and | endemic at this point. This problem permeates virtually every | large organization in existence; public or private. | | It's partly an issue of education, partly an issue of | organizational structuring, and partly an issue of | accessibility of technologies. But the sum of these parts has | become entirely unacceptable in the year 2021. | EsotericAlgo wrote: | While not universally true, a manual process does typically | require a process to fix mistakes. This is true of software | as well but the perceived lack of errors in software | processes often leads to this being ignore resulting in the | aforementioned "bureaucratic violence". I do think automated | solutions are inherently better because of the bias reasons | you call out but it cuts both ways and removes interpretation | from processes that may not respect nuance. | caconym_ wrote: | > The reality is that manual entry is even more error-prone, | bias-prone, with more people falling through the cracks. | | It doesn't have to be. But when it's subjected to the same | incentives that produced this software and perpetuated its | broken state, we should expect the result to be much the | same. | | When you pull back and try to look at it with fresh eyes, our | prison system is abjectly terrifying. It's designed to funnel | wealth to private entities, not to implement justice or | rehabilitate criminals or whatever other worthy goal(s) you | might imagine for it. This story (as horrifying as it is just | by itself) is only one little corner of the monolithic | perversity of the system as a whole, and the executive powers | involved in steering that system are about as close to _evil_ | as you can find in the real world. | | The whole thing needs to be torn down and rebuilt. As long as | it exists, it puts the lie to our claim of being a society | that values freedom and justice. | | Circling back, I guess the point is that the ideas about how | to do software in your last paragraph have no chance of being | implemented in the system as it currently exists. To fix | "systemic problems", we will have to aim a lot higher with a | much bigger gun. | UweSchmidt wrote: | One of the issues is that laws are made on paper and then | everyone needs to figure out how to map it to software. | Instead, laws should be codified in software and legal APIs | should be binding. This would do wonders for efficiency, but | also force laws to be cleaned up, be consistent, simple and | logical. | jakelazaroff wrote: | I don't even know what this would entail. Reality is | continuous and subjective; computers are not. And there's | no reason that "legal APIs" would be any more cleaned up, | consistent, simple or logical than our current legal | system. | vlovich123 wrote: | So the government writes up a spec for how the legalese | should map to code that engineers then implement? How is | that different from what happens now? | UweSchmidt wrote: | Only the programmed end result in code would be legally | binding. Lawmakers would have a big interst in making | sure the code is correct and provide incentives/change | procedures accordingly. | | The inmates in this article would be released immediately | after the code-law is implemented; you could apply new | tax laws (i.e. as a config file) to your accounting | software. | | Why maintain an obfuscated legal text when you need it in | software anyway? | Clubber wrote: | I don't think it's so much that software is better or worse | than manual entry. First, it's the attitude / rules that | assume what's in the system is right. Second, it's no real | procedure to audit or check the accuracy of the data. | | From a professional who works with data systems, you're more | likely to have a database with bad data in it that not. | munk-a wrote: | > Comments like yours seem to glorify a pre-software world | filled with manual entry. The reality is that manual entry is | even more error-prone, bias-prone, with more people falling | through the cracks. | | I think that the pre-software world was quite bias-prone and | extremely expensive for large processing jobs like this. The | question is how this system was allowed to transition from | the expensive manually managed system that used to be in | place to the automatic software driven system that is | replacing it at such a cut-rate that gigantic bugs were | allowed to sneak in. | | It appears this software is primarily used by the state | government so why was such a poor replacement allowed as a | substitute for the working manual process. | | Also, the number of bugs this software has accumulated since | Nov 2019 (14000) is astounding enough that I assume it's | counting incidents - that's a fair way to go since these are | folks' lives, but I'd be curious to know just how bug laden | this software actually is. | | _Although_ there is another factor here - this specific | release program was a rather late feature addition that may | not have been covered in the original contract with ACIS | since the bill was only signed into law two months before the | software was rolled out. | mysterydip wrote: | Probably like most government purchases, lowest bidder wins | as long as they show on paper that they can do the job. | Whether they execute on that is another matter, and some | times the subpar work is accepted because of contract | issues, sunk cost fallacy, politics/reputations, or | schedule. | ethbr0 wrote: | The problem is that we never evolved COBOL / VB. | | Or we did, but then used the resulting easier-to-learn / | easier-to-write languages exclusively for web dev, and | further specialized them. | | There's a mind-bogglingly _huge_ chasm of simple business | data processing software that has no performance | requirements & no need to be written in an impenetrable | language. | | Any one of the employees there could probably tell you what | _should_ be done in each case, and it 's an indictment of | our profession that we haven't created a good language / | system that lets them do so. | | You can optimize along increase-developer-productivity or | along increase-potential-developer-population. We chose the | former. | dmead wrote: | most of us have jobs that service the revenue streams of rich | owners. what did you think was going to happen? | ehnto wrote: | It's such a hard question to answer, because software doesn't | exist in a vacuum. Hopefully this example is relevant: | | You're a software developer maintaining an eCommerce platform, | on the one hand your platform helps perpetuate low margin and | wasteful consumerism, on the other hand your software enables | small businesses to compete in the new online world. | | Consumerism is bad, but commerce is as old as civilization and | supports all of our lifestyles, so on a macro level you're in a | tough spot. You're a talented developer putting their skills to | work building something the community needs, I personally think | that means you're doing good work in the context of your | society, but it is difficult to say if it's making the world a | better place. | | Social media is the same. On the one hand, it connects family | and friends, on the other it drives narcissisms, consumerism | and misinformation. | | You almost have to try and calculate the "Net Good" or "Net | Bad" of a type of software and see how the cards fall. For | social media I would suggest that it's currently in a "Net Bad" | situation, causing more harm than good for example. | jrochkind1 wrote: | What are the ethical obligations of software developers working | on this project? | platinumrad wrote: | They almost certainly have zero decision making power so | whistleblowing and then quitting is the obvious course of | action. | | >"It was Thanksgiving weekend," one source recalled. "We were | killing ourselves working on it, but every person associated | with the software rollout begged (Deputy Director) Profiri not | to go live." | | >But multiple sources involved in the rollout said they were | instructed by department leadership to "not say a word" about | their concerns. "We were told 'We're too deep into it -- too | much money had been spent -- we can't go back now.'" | wombatpm wrote: | Back in the late 90's a bunch got released early due to Y2K. So | it balances out | atty wrote: | The fact that they appear to have identified individuals who | should be released, but have not, due to the software not being | updated, is frankly disgusting. | | I believe holding a person against their will is a criminal act - | seems like most of the employees of the Arizona correctional | facilities are now guilty of crimes worse than the majority of | their inmates. | hkh28 wrote: | As an outside observer (European) this seems to be the way the | American prison system is run. The inmates are not viewed as | humans by the people responsible, enabling horrible conditions. | | Fixing such an issue should be top priority, and in the | meantime, you would revert to pen and paper accounting to | ensure the correct release of each prisoner. | ashtonkem wrote: | You're overlooking something else. America has an | unbelievable number of prisoners, which makes more careful | and humane management effectively impossible. Estimates are | that we've got about 2% of the US population in prison or | somewhere else in the correctional system (pre-trial | detention, probation, parole, etc.), the labor required to | treat these people like humans isn't available. And arguably | by the point where you're locking that many people up, as a | society that might be the point. | | As an aside, it does really rankle me that a country that | won't shut up about being "the land of the free" is arguably | a prison state. | cwkoss wrote: | The US has a specific exemption to the prohibition of | slavery for incarcerated individuals in our constitution. I | think there are many powerful people in our country with a | vested interest in keeping the prison-slave-labor pipeline | flowing. | danaliv wrote: | _Grandmaster:_ Revolution? How did this happen? | | _Topaz:_ Don 't know. But the Arena's mainframe for the | Obedience Disks have been deactivated and the slaves have | armed themselves. | | _Grandmaster:_ Ohhh! I don 't like that word! | | _Topaz:_ Mainframe? | | _Grandmaster:_ No. Why would I not like "mainframe?" | No, the "S" word! | | _Topaz:_ Sorry, the "prisoners with jobs" have armed | themselves. | | _Grandmaster:_ Okay, that 's better. | edbob wrote: | The exemption allows an individual to be sentenced to | slavery , but that can only happen if the federal or | state laws also allow that sentence. Is there any | jurisdiction whose laws allow a sentence of slavery? Has | anyone actually been sentenced to slavery in the last 100 | years or so? I would imagine that if some jurisdiction | somehow did sentence someone to slavery, the states would | quickly amend the constitution to make that impossible, | while the courts would doubtless find some other grounds | for ruling that sentence unconstitutional. It just seems | unnecessary to make a currently impossible sentence a | little more impossible. | | I was sentenced to hard labor, but that is quite a | distinct sentence. I was a ward of the state, but not | property. | ashtonkem wrote: | It's wise in these situations to consider the concept of | plausible deniability, and how it can be used to obscure | intent. | | To my knowledge, nobody has been sentenced to slavery in | a long, long time. On the other hand, the US has managed | to lock up 2% of its population and force them to labor | in circumstances and rates that would be illegal for free | citizens in order to guarantee the profit of private | corporations. That this system of arbitrary law | enforcement[0] disproportionately hits the same sub-group | that used to be literally enslaved really should send | your eyebrows through the ceiling when the defense is | that it's not literally slavery. | | Of course, US prisoners are not chattel slaves; they're | not literally property, and neither are their children. | On the other hand the rate of recidivism in the US, and | the strong correlation of outcomes between parent to | child makes this kind of a cruel joke. If your father | having been in prison makes you overwhelmingly likely to | end up in prison yourself for similar reasons, it's hard | to put on a straight face and pretend that nothing is | wrong. | | I'd argue that this structure represents something akin | to stochastic terrorism, but for forced labor. Stochastic | terrorism is a case where someone or some group attempts | to radicalize and encourage terrorism from afar. Done | correctly it produces a statistical probability of terror | attacks without anyone (even the group) being able to | predict the exact time and place. These types of systems | are _very_ hard to disrupt, which is why groups like ISIS | leaned on them in order to attack the west, which had | gotten very good at stopping more organized attacks. | | Similarly, I'd argue that the US system represents a type | of stochastic slavery. It's impossible to precisely | predict who will or will not end up in the system | providing free labor (unlike chattel slavery, where it's | very easy to predict), but one can easily calculate the | aggregate chance of someone ending up in prison. It's not | literally slavery, but with the recidivism rate so high | it ends up functioning like it for most people caught up | in it. Oh, and it's run for a profit too, which is deeply | concerning. | | 0 - Drug laws remain key to why America has so many | people locked up, and drug law enforcement is incredibly | arbitrary, both in terms of which drugs get which | sentences, and who gets the hammer dropped on them when | they get caught. | edbob wrote: | For the record, I fully support decriminalizing drugs, | even if I disagree with the currently fashionable | rhetoric about their supposed harmlessness. The | statistical debate you want to have is fine. It could | potentially be helpful, but not if you insist on terms | that tell people that they are helpless. Please just | stick to accurate terms that don't convince people to not | even try. | | We have an existing term, "prison labor", which | accurately describes the conditions and evokes the | appropriate moral connotations. When we have completely | adequate terms already, why insist on a legally | inaccurate word which requires such a lengthy | redefinition? | | Slavery is an involuntary condition which cannot be | exited through one's actions. It's vital to recognize | that criminals can choose to exit the criminal class. | It's not vital for rich people in the suburbs who don't | have to live in our world. It's vital for us, ourselves. | Those of us who accept responsibility for their actions | tend to be the ones who make it in society. The ones who | blame society, government, Republicans, white men, SJWs, | or _anything_ else outside of themselves which they have | no control over, keep doing the same things over and | over, stay addicted to drugs, sex, and violence, and keep | coming to prison over and over. (There are some skinheads | that blame racial preferences for their own failures in | life, lest anyone think that I 'm naming SJWs | facetiously). Rich people can afford to have these | intellectual debates that talk about helping the poor but | never seem to actually do anything. _We_ have to actually | live in this world, where our own choices and actions | will be the only ones we can always count on. | | Stop telling people that they have no control over their | lives. If they believe you, it will be true. These ivory | tower theories have real-world consequences. They never | seem to get around to actually helping the poor, but they | do convince people that they can't help themselves, and | those are the people that I see coming back to prison on | their 8th or 9th sentence. Those are the guys with 8 | kids, most of whom will also end up dead or in prison. | [deleted] | airstrike wrote: | > America has an unbelievable number of prisoners, which | makes more careful and humane management effectively | impossible. | | But that is such a cop out... America has the number of | prisoners it has by choice, not due to some inexorable | condition which differentiates it from other developed | nations. | ashtonkem wrote: | > But that is such a cop out... America has the number of | prisoners it has by choice, not due to some inexorable | condition which differentiates it from other developed | nations. | | > And arguably by the point where you're locking that | many people up, as a society that might be the point. | | I already covered that in my original post, please don't | snark over things that were already pointed out. | edbob wrote: | > The inmates are not viewed as humans by the people | responsible, enabling horrible conditions. | | This was not my experience as an inmate in Texas. Actually, | we are referred to as "offenders" [0] because the terms | "inmate" and "convict" are considered offensive. Staff can | get in trouble for using a pejorative word like "inmate". | (Not that they _never_ do because quite honestly I don 't | know anyone that actually finds the word offensive, but it's | still not a word you want to say in front of the warden or | higher administrators). | | The truth is that staff and administrators are human and have | diverse viewpoints. Some don't care about the inmates, but | some really want to make a difference in the world. The staff | are racially diverse, so you get, for example, a black | officer that is very tough on black gangs because he thinks | they make black people look bad, but then you have black | staff that are particularly sympathetic to black offenders. | You can't stereotype the staff--they're just too different. | | They're also paranoid about legal liability, so they are | pretty careful about avoiding things that could potentially | expose them to a lawsuit. It's just like any other large | bureaucracy. | | > in the meantime, you would revert to pen and paper | accounting to ensure the correct release of each prisoner. | | Per the article, they are in fact manually computing each | prisoner's projected release date: | | > In the meantime, Lamoreaux confirmed the "data is being | calculated manually and then entered into the system." | Department sources said this means "someone is sitting there | crunching numbers with a calculator and interpreting how each | of the new laws that have been passed would impact an | inmate." | | [0] https://live.staticflickr.com/2048/2235184432_47cfa473bb_ | b.j... | nybble41 wrote: | > Actually, we are referred to as "offenders" because the | terms "inmate" and "convict" are considered offensive. | | Odd. I would think "offender" would be much _more_ | offensive than either "convict" or "inmate". The "convict" | label may be in dispute in some cases, e.g. pre-trial or | with a case undergoing appeal, but it's hard to argue with | the fact that someone is (rightly or wrongly) an inmate of | a prison. To me, of the three, "offender" sounds the most | like a pejorative personal judgement rather than a neutral | summation of undisputed facts. | serial_dev wrote: | It's tragic that the wrong noun is offensive and staff is | taught to use the "right" terms, but being not being | released on time... Well, sorry, the software says you | stay, you stay, even if everyone realised it's a software | "bug" (or outdated software). | distribot wrote: | > This was not my experience as an inmate in Texas. | | Where did you do your time? Because 70% of Texas inmates | are housed in facilities without A/C. Concrete structures | that get up to 105 degrees. Inmate accounts of this are | truly horrific. | | The state spent 7 million fighting against having to fix | this, potentially (according to plaintiffs) more than the | cost of fixing it. So the state is so dedicated to horrible | conditions that they spent more money to fight than it | would have cost to fix them. Litigation has been going on | for years, and the state authorities are still dragging | their feet. | | This is just one example of the way the carceral system | dehumanizes people. I'm sure youre familiar with Nutraloaf. | | https://www.texastribune.org/2018/07/26/texas-prison-heat- | ai... | edbob wrote: | The lack of A/C really sucks, and it's worse in the dorms | which are steel buildings rather than concrete. I | actually stayed in the top level of the dorms on the | corner of the building that got hit hardest by the sun. | It was hard. | | I call bullshit on the cost of installing and maintaining | A/C in 100-ish large prisons being under 7 million. Back | of the envelope, but the cost of crane rental alone could | be millions. How much to remove (and later replace) the | fencing to move the trucks and cranes in, and how much in | overtime to make all this happen and provide security? We | could be over 7 million before we even get to the | thousands of A/C units, which will predictably fail and | have to be replaced, with cranes, every 20-30 years. TDCJ | maintenance is pretty good at keeping things running on a | budget, but no heavy equipment other than boilers can be | expected to last more than 30 years at the very most. | | Edit: Another article [0] made it clear that the $7 | million figure was only for the lawsuit over a single | prison, while the cost of installing A/C in that one | prison was estimated at $4 million, with no word on if it | went over budget. This is true, but it's clear that the | lawsuit would be used as precedent for requiring A/C in | other units, so it would be more accurate to compare that | one lawsuit's $7 million cost to the much greater figure | of $500-1,000 million for the prison system as a whole. | The Pack Unit is on the small side, and there are about | 120 prisons in TDCJ, so I actually think the $1 billion | figure seems reasonable. Note that this is just the cost | of installation, and is not a one-time cost but will be | repeated every 20-30 years, regardless of how much prices | may rise. I would like to see A/C installed throughout, | but it's important to account for the true costs. | | As hard as the heat was, I didn't feel dehumanized by it. | First, the system does identify people who are actually | at risk and houses them in cooler areas. I wasn't at | risk, so it was merely very uncomfortable. I'm tough | enough to handle a high degree of physical discomfort. | Second, I felt like many of the staff would have liked to | have A/C everywhere, and that the lack of it was due to | decisions made long ago which will take a decade or more | to change, as I don't think TDCJ is realistically capable | of installing cooling systems in just a few years. Their | efforts in court have seemed to me to be panicked efforts | to get out of a task that they know they aren't able to | perform, not about intentionally wanting people to suffer | or viewing them as less than human. I will note that TDCJ | made, and is continuing to make, radical changes to | improve the cooling of the buildings. They have replaced | plexiglass with steel mesh to allow airflow, issued | personal fans to indigents and provided many, many fans | for the housing areas. They installed swamp coolers in | some prisons, but those aren't practical everywhere due | to mold and corrosion. | | I can definitely see where people would have different | opinions, but this was my experience. The important | dehumanizing factors to me were the futility and | pointlessness of wasting time there, along with the toxic | culture and attitudes of some of the inmates. Heat would | not make a top 5 list of dehumanizing factors. | | > I'm sure youre familiar with Nutraloaf. | | We call it foodloaf. The breakfast one can actually be | really good, but the lunch and dinner ones can be gross. | The problem is that you have people who constantly | assault the guards, throw feces on them, etc., and the | loaf delivered in a brown bag is the only meal that can | be delivered with minimal risk to the staff. Open the | slot, toss in the bag, close the slot as quickly as | possible. Less than a second window to be attacked. Do | you have a better solution that doesn't compromise | safety? | | I never felt like having short-term consequences for my | actions was dehumanizing. If I don't want to eat | foodloaf, I don't jack off on the nurses or attack the | guards. If I do attack the guards, I can still change my | ways and just not attack them for 30 days (probably less | in reality) to get normal food again. In that case, I | actually feel like I'm being treated like a responsible | adult. If I could behave like an animal without any real | consequences, that would be dehumanizing to me. Not to | mention how dehumanizing it would be to have to live with | a bunch of people who can freely act like animals. | | [0] https://www.texastribune.org/2019/03/21/texas- | prisons-air-co... | WarOnPrivacy wrote: | >The inmates are not viewed as humans | | Easy power comes from demonizing people we don't understand | or don't like. Our political parties are so addicted to | animosity, they've become incapable of functioning without | it. | P_I_Staker wrote: | It depends what we're talking about. On paper our system | isn't so different. Prisoners are people that have been found | to transgress so many rights are forfeited, but not all of | them. We send them to correction centers to get better. They | leave and rights are restored. | | The issue is that many of the people involved feel | differently in their hearts, and see the rehabilitative side | as a bunch of feel good nonsense. It's never gonna work, or | isn't worth paying for. More to the point we're chronically | unwilling to put any resources towards these goals. It's all | about being seen ensuring public safety and making sure no | one gets a handout. | edbob wrote: | This is just how bureaucracy typically operates. Everyone knows | that the system is messed up, but no one can override the | system without potentially huge personal consequences. | | As a former prison inmate, I honestly think that most of the | people affected will be quite happy with the monetary | compensation that they'll receive once the courts get done with | this. | | > seems like most of the employees of the Arizona correctional | facilities are now guilty of crimes worse than the majority of | their inmates. | | This is destructive thinking. There are surely some employees | without relevant authority who are thinking "screw those | animals", but there are surely other employees, also without | relevant authority, who are sympathetic to the affected | prisoners and want to see their cause prevail. None of the | employees who work on the actual prisons have any | responsibility for this. Releasing a felon is a huge deal and | can _only_ be done when ordered. Only the top people at the | DOC, at their headquarters, have any authority that could | possibly help in this situation. | | About the "crimes worse than the majority of their inmates" | part: If you compare to the crimes inmates were actually | convicted of, perhaps they don't look so bad. But quite a few | inmates have claimed to me to be guilty of crimes much worse | than what they were convicted of. People get caught on the drug | charges, but often get away with the violence. What percentage | of rape in the hood do you think gets reported to police? 1%? | Less? | cwkoss wrote: | > But quite a few inmates have claimed to me to be guilty of | crimes much worse than what they were convicted of. | | This is irrelevant and a dangerous ends-justification. No | person's imprisonment should be justified by crimes they were | not convicted of. We should not seek a justice system that | punishes unprovable crimes. | | What percentage of rapes by prison guards (or police or CEOs | or politicians) gets reported to police? What percentage of | those reports results in a conviction? Probably far less than | "rape in the hood". | edbob wrote: | > This is irrelevant and a dangerous ends-justification. No | person's imprisonment should be justified by crimes they | were not convicted of. We should not seek a justice system | that punishes unprovable crimes. | | I did not say anything remotely like that. The justice | system should absolutely be strictly restricted to proven | offenses, and the consequences should be limited to, at | max, the letter of the prescribed sentence. What I actually | did was to compare atty's quite unfounded accusations that | would never survive in court to some significantly better- | founded accusations that would also never survive in court. | It was basically just a sanity check, and was not intended | to have any implications other than to put the brakes on a | destructive, polarizing line of rhetoric. | | > What percentage of rapes by prison guards (or police or | CEOs or politicians) gets reported to police? What | percentage of those reports results in a conviction? | | There are cameras _everywhere_. The staff has to report and | investigate any and every complaint about sexual abuse, | even the guy that claims that aliens abducted him from his | cell and raped him. They will take you to medical and | administer a rape kit if you ask, because they will surely | get fired if they refuse. Staff and inmates get caught all | the time, but usually for consensual sex. Consensual sex is | a lot easier to get away with than rape. (The caveat here | is that inmates, as wards of the state, are not legally | able to give consent, so when a guard gets caught having | "consensual" sex with an inmate they are still prosecuted | for the state-jail felony charge "improper sexual activity | with a person in custody" [0][1]). | | [0] https://www.ktre.com/story/32833848/affidavit-female- | tdcj-co... [1] https://codes.findlaw.com/tx/penal- | code/penal-sect-39-04.htm... | [deleted] | giantg2 wrote: | Except the people in the system have immunity. | | Even laws like kidnapping have a motive portion, and basically | an incompetent cop or other official can do what they and just | claim they sucked at their job so the motive portion can't be | met. | ashtonkem wrote: | Well, prison fundamentally is about holding someone against | their will. The specific issue here is that they're being held | contrary to the rules laid out by society. | NullPrefix wrote: | Computer says no. | hnedeotes wrote: | I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. | | (and I'm not making fun of this - it's not a situation I | would wish to be) | swayvil wrote: | Computer cited as authoritative basis, we see a lot of that | these days. | | Metal hand, flesh puppet. | jessaustin wrote: | Ouch! | GordonS wrote: | Yes, it is particularly ugly that they appear to be refusing to | release prisoners they _know_ have completed their sentence, | purely because of bureaucracy - surely there are systems in | place for working without the software. | | I hope every one of the prisoners held past their release date | sues and wins. | trhway wrote: | >Software Bug Keeping Hundreds of Inmates in Arizona Prisons | Beyond Release Dates | | language as the key as usual, it builds mental model different | from reality and sets the discussion context obscuring the real | issue and already skewed toward the angle the speaker wants - | "software bug keeping". It isn't software who keeps the inmates, | it is the people employed in that branch of government, and | ultimately it is "we, the people". Blaming "computer" is as old | an excuse as the pyramids as we still fall for it. Even more | today i think. | atoav wrote: | I think it is time for programmers to go to jail, when something | like this happens. Just like in civil engineering when the bridge | you built collapses and kills people. | | I am a programmer myself. The shit you can get away with by | claiming a software error is ridiculous and quite frankly | dangerous. A bureacracies dream is being able to blame every bad | outcome on a software error. We all know software errors are like | a higher force, divine intervention, natural catastrophes -- | nothing can be done about them. | | It is time we start taking our profession seriously, own our | mistakes and collectively raise the stakes foe our errors. | vburg wrote: | No one take responsibility. Just blame the algorithm or | something. Maybe upgrade to a deep learning black box for perfect | deniability. | heavenlyblue wrote: | A close issue: I have recently realised that none of the phone | operators in the UK are capable of transferring phone numbers | across contracts inside the same company without cancelling them | first (and you are officially on the hook for the remainder in | the contract). Their systems are organised around "cancelling the | contract = transferring the number". Happened to me with | Vodafone. | totalZero wrote: | Here's a solution: | | Imprison fewer people so that human review of life-critical | software applications is faster and less costly. | swiley wrote: | You have to avoid organizations that do the "computer said so" | thing. They are universally pathological. | jdeibele wrote: | When I wanted to have compiled [1] financials, | PriceWaterhouseCoopers told me to pick a recognized accounting | system, then change the company's business processes to match | that. They said absolutely not to go the other way, to try to | customize any software to match our business. | | I think about that every time I read about another government (or | private!) company that wastes tens or hundreds of million of | dollars (or euros or pounds) on custom software. | | It seems like there should be 1, 2, or 3 DMV programs. The same | for building codes, tax codes, etc. And prison software. You can | be more like Massachusetts or Mississippi or Montana | (hypothetical examples) but pick one and harmonize with it. | | 1: compiled is the lowest of 3 standards that outside accountants | can do; "reviewed" is higher and "audited" is the highest. Even | at the compiled level they mailed out postcards to a certain | number of customers asking if they were customers over the past | year and had spent this much money. It was fairly easy for the | acquiring company's outside accountants to review PWC's work and | bring it up to audited standard. | airstrike wrote: | An alternative is to have the federal government offer the | "federal choice" which states and local governments can choose | to use instead of rolling out their own. | spaetzleesser wrote: | In states, counties and cities a lot of contracting basically | has the purpose of pushing money to well connected people. | They don't want an efficient and cost effective solution. | | I know somebody who audits municipalities. We did a graph | that showed relations between different players. It's | basically just a big insider club of usually 20-40 people and | families that give contracts to each other at the expense of | the tax payer. | er4hn wrote: | This advice appears based on deficiencies in programming | however. Programs operate on algorithms to process data. When | the programs or algorithms fail to be able to do so properly | the program is at fault. | | In your cases you have items like: accounting, building codes, | tax codes, automobile codes, etc. | | While it makes sense to try and harmonize with the general | policies, every state, every municipality, and every business | is going to have special cases. Even software has edge cases | for protocol behaviors. | | What would be nicer, imho, is if all of these laws were written | in domain specific languages that specify the law and then the | software could just pick up the definitions signed into law. | Lawyers as they are feel like a combination of legal | interpreters, combined with a combination of being red/blue | security team members depending on what they are doing. | reillyse wrote: | This appears to me to be a terrible idea. In effect you would | have private companies writing the laws of the land. "I'm sorry | California you can't change your laws because it doesn't fit | into the three options we have available at our preferred | software vendor". Seems like the tail wagging the dog. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Login.gov cribbed off of the UK's digital office that built a | similar system. I believe that's what OP was alluding too. | | How many unemployment systems, prisoner tracking systems, DMV | systems do you need? These are common components across | governments. | | Example: Login.gov now supports local and state government | partners. Your constituent IAM needs can now be met by a | federal team that is efficient and competent, instead of | every city and state reinventing the wheel (poorly and in | expensively). | dragonwriter wrote: | > Example: Login.gov now supports local and state | government partners. Congrats, your constituent IAM needs | can now be met by a federal team that is efficient and | competent. | | Outside of functions that are joint state-federal to start | with, states tend to treat the federal government as just | another outside sovereign (and one whose Administration is | intermittently actively politically hostile), which is | worse than a private contractor in terms of being able to | get them to uphold their end of a contract. | | So, not someone you'd outsource to unless you were more | concerned about having someone else to blame if things go | wrong than actually being able to assure that things go | right. | | > How many unemployment systems, prisoner tracking systems, | DMV systems do you need? These are common components across | governments. | | Mostly, not, because while the names may be the same, the | actual laws setting the system requirements tend to be | radically different. | toomuchtodo wrote: | I have had good luck advocating for several jurisdictions | to rely on login.gov for IAM once this support was made | available (on my own time, acting as a product | evangelist, because I believe in the model). YMMV. | doomjunky wrote: | For the sake of completeness: | | "Prisoners released early by software bug (2015)" | https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35167191 | [deleted] | sneak wrote: | > _The employees said they have been raising the issue internally | for more than a year, but prison administrators have not acted to | fix the software bug. The sources said Chief Information Officer | Holly Greene and Deputy Director Joe Profiri have been aware of | the problem since 2019._ | | So the prison administration know there are people being held | that shouldn't be held, but they are still keeping them behind | bars. | | This is not a software problem. | floatingatoll wrote: | I expect that Arizona will end up paying in restitution to | prisoners who served too much time _more_ than it would have cost | to have the software patch implemented by their vendor with a | significant bonus offered, that decreases each week the vendor | fails to deliver a working solution. | king_panic wrote: | whoops | f430 wrote: | Criminals shouldn't expect the same level of attention and care | rest of the law abiding civilians expect. They can take their | time addressing this software bug. Perhaps put out a public | tender for bids until the end of the year for fair competition | amongst local software shops who will then outsource it to a | distant country over the next few years to keep as much of the | capital as possible in the local community. | | Expect delays, such is the nature of legacy software. | fractal618 wrote: | Its not a bug | mensetmanusman wrote: | Well, if a judge ruled that a software bug means that you don't | get your money back if you accidentally send it out, then that | same judge would probably rule that the inmates have to stay in | jail due to a software bug. | dghlsakjg wrote: | Aside: The difference in the Citibank case is that the money | was actually owed. Citibank was in the process of trying to get | out of paying it when they sent payment. | | Also, money can be given back, time can't. | _joel wrote: | From what I've read and seen about the US penal system, from this | side of the pond, is that it's a big cash cow. The cynic in me | says they're turning a blind eye for a reason. | x86_64Ubuntu wrote: | It's been a cash cow since the end of the Civil War. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convict_leasing | notwhereyouare wrote: | That article just kept getting worse and worse. They mention | assigning a penalty to the wrong inmate and they couldn't fix it. | | All of a sudden that person could no longer make calls for 30 | days, and they did _nothing_ wrong to get that. | toomuchtodo wrote: | "Show me the incentives, I'll show you the outcome." | | If corrections staff were held personally liable for these | failures, or the local jurisdiction faced steep financial | penalties, it wouldn't happen. No liability, no responsibility. | blobbers wrote: | These are prison workers and you're asking them to run a | social network (with certain constraints). | | They wouldn't even know the first thing about how to hire | someone capable of doing this. They'd have to hire a | consultant to hire another consultant. | toomuchtodo wrote: | Corrections management is who I would consider the directly | responsible party, not corrections ICs (to be clear, no | scapegoats). The buck stops somewhere when we're talking | about infringing on someone's right to freedom. Excuses are | unacceptable. | ryandrake wrote: | The buck seems to stop at the computer/AI nowadays, in an | alarmingly growing number institutions and companies. And | you can't punish a computer or hold an AI accountable. | This seems to be an end state desired by people who were | previously accountable. | whywhywhywhy wrote: | How did they manage to do it 20+ years ago? | vorpalhex wrote: | This seems like a problem for the prison, not the inmates. In | general, the prison software being faulty means the prison should | just hand-calculate this as needed. The inmates should still be | able to be released as appropriate. | | If it costs the prison 10x normal costs to do calculations by | hand.. well, that's the cost of business. | sparrish wrote: | And that's exactly what they're doing (according to the | article) | mulmen wrote: | Could something like this be fixed by leveraging the existing | incentives? Something like if an inmate challenges the output of | the system then they will automatically be released in, say, 90 | days unless the output of the system can be validated manually, | perhaps by a third party? | | Suddenly there is an incentive to create a verifiable and correct | system on the part of the prison-industrial complex itself. | parsecs wrote: | There doesn't seem to be any incentive _against_ challenging, | so what 's to prevent some black box bureaucratic software | pipeline to take in any challenge and automatically label them | as "verified"? | | Any "third party" that doesn't belong to the prison-industrial | complex becomes part of it if they get involved with this. | njdullea wrote: | $24 million dollars and no tests to assert that 'march 1 + 1 | month + 15 days == April 16th'? | | Geez.. | woodruffw wrote: | To color this even further: the hundreds of people who are | illegally imprisoned are being held for drug or even just | paraphernalia possession. The law that grants them credits | _explicitly_ excludes violent felons[1]. | | [1]: | https://corrections.az.gov/sites/default/files/documents/PDF... | kazinator wrote: | > _One of the software modules within ACIS, designed to calculate | release dates for inmates, is presently unable to account for an | amendment to state law that was passed in 2019._ | | If that description is accurate, that doesn't meet the definition | of a "software bug", if the software was produced before that law | was passed, and not updated since. | | The bug is in the _process_ of not having a plan for updating the | software in a timely way when laws change, and not having a | requirement in place for overriding the calculations in the | interim. | | What if an inmate suddenly receives a pardon? | giantg2 wrote: | Yeah, this sucks. It's (unfortunately) not surprising. | | My wife had a citation that affected our liberties. The cop even | knew that he didn't have probable cause but let the charge stand | for more than a month. Nobody in the system cares. The | magistrates and judges don't care, even though the new charge | should be dismissed with prejudice over this and other rights | violations. The supervisors and IA for the state police don't | care and even cover some of the stuff up. The DA's office doesn't | care either. | | IT'S ALL ABOUT THE MONEY | lbriner wrote: | In the UK, people often sue for wrongful arrest etc. and I | though the US was much worse for litigation. Is it simply that | the victims are mainly poor and not connected enough to sue or | is the legal system there really that immune from action due to | wrongful process? | giantg2 wrote: | According to a civil rights lawyer I talked to, the judges | for the courts don't care unless you suffered extensive | monetary damages. That the DA and the judges tend to side | with the cops because they work with them on other cases | often. On top of that, there are so many minor rights | violations and an extensive case backlog. Issues like ours | are common, so the system basically overlooks them so it can | process the 1-2 year case backlog (pre pandemic times even). | Mix that with the public perception that if you were arrested | or cited, then you must be guilty and deserve it. | gumby wrote: | Arizona has private prisons (subject of civil rights lawsuits, | but TBF I bet they all are). I would not be at all surprised if | it's in the interests of these companies and the prison guard | unions to conveniently ignore this issue. | tzs wrote: | The private prison contracts I've seen published have the state | pay a fixed amount for up to a certain number of prisoners, say | 97% of the capacity of the facility, plus a per prisoner amount | for each prisoner over that fixed amount. | | The numbers I've been able to find suggest that Arizona's | overall state prison population is well below capacity, | suggesting that it is likely that the private prisons are | operating in the fixed price range of their contracts. | | If that is the case the prison company make more money when a | prisoner is released than they do when the prisoner is | retained. | gumby wrote: | Rats, refuting my knee-jerk supposition with actual facts! | | Thanks for that, actually | carbocation wrote: | The purpose of a system is what it does. | spoonjim wrote: | Make this a statutory $10,000 per day penalty, issued to the | software vendor and bonded by an insurance company as a | procurement requirement, and it will stop happening. | xen2xen1 wrote: | I was once told that if I wanted to make millions of dollars | instantly I should write software to just calculate jail exit | dates. With "Time for good behavior", skipping parole, credit for | time served you can give five people a inmate's jacket and get | five different dates easily, and should rationally expect to. | edoceo wrote: | It's like gov system don't even have test cases. They should, and | they should be public. Why aren't these softwares for the public | open source? | | See also: employment security sites, cannabis track and trace, | driving license, etc. | | Some of these bugs cause direct financial harm to citizens and | this one is much worse! | | Show me the test cases! Show me the code!! | sodality2 wrote: | If my tax $ goes to it, it should have source available | (excepting natsec). it would be nice to get some value out of | it. If it's well written, I could learn how a large scale | project works. If not, I can have something to petition and | voice my concerns about, inform about vulns, etc. | [deleted] | lbriner wrote: | I think there is still a genuine concern that open-source | software allows bad people to find loopholes before the good | people do. The last thing you want is someone finding a bug | that allows a murderer to get released because the computer | said-so. | | I think it can be managed but it is a genuine concern | nonetheless. | dec0dedab0de wrote: | I would much rather error on the side of releasing someone | early, instead of holding people longer. | adolph wrote: | Well, I can't show you the test cases and code, but the | available requirements are pretty tough to go through: | | https://www.azleg.gov/ARStitle/ | p_l wrote: | In best cases, the test cases are good and pass... and yet such | errors will still abound. | | Why? Because the spec for which the tests where written didn't | include some contingency, for example with software that | rigidly require certain steps to happen and doesn't provide a | human-controlled override. | neartheplain wrote: | Reminds of the opening scene from the 1985 movie "Brazil." | Computer misprints the name on an arrest warrant as the result of | a (literal) bug, and nightmarish tragicomedy ensures: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzFmPFLIH5s | | Highly underrated movie, with ever more contemporary relevance. | [deleted] | 1024core wrote: | The company in question, "Business & Decision NA" is a French | company, though their website is pretty sparse on the details: | https://www.linkedin.com/organization-guest/company/business... | | So, some French brogrammers are preventing US citizens from being | released from prison due to incompetence. | notRobot wrote: | Clearly you haven't read the article because it's not the | programmers' faults. The software is doing what it was designed | to do. The prison failed to get it updated with new | requirements. | fortran77 wrote: | In reality, cruel, incompetent, and careless administrators kept | hundreds of inmates in Arizona prisons beyond release dates. | averageuser wrote: | "Inmates walk out of prison as free people and then have to re- | enter society. It's like they're sentenced twice." | elihu wrote: | > "When they legislate these things, they need to be | appropriating enough money to make sure they work," a source | said. They estimated fixing the SB1310 bug would take roughly | 2,000 additional programming hours. | | 40 hours a week times 52 weeks is 2080 hours. Subtract a few | weeks for vacations and holidays, and you get a little less that | 2000 hours. So, basically, this is a little more than one | programmer-year of effort if the estimate is in the right | ballpark. | | It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an apparent | implicit economic calculation that one programmer-year is more | valuable than the freedom that is being denied to an unknown | number of people whom society deems less important. (Granted the | actual situation is more complicated and the state is constrained | by their contract with the vendor, which we can reasonably guess | is going to charge as much as they can contractually get away | with rather than the programmer's actual salary cost.) | | At least the Department of Corrections has assigned people to do | the calculations manually. That's better, but it sounds like they | just don't have enough people on it to keep up. | rsj_hn wrote: | > It's gross that the decision not to fix this carries an | apparent implicit economic calculation | | Spending money will remain economic decision until we can have | government agencies fueled by the righteous indignation of | their critics rather than having a line item added to their | budget. Until you can convert that indignation into legal | tender, agencies will remain subject to old fashioned | accounting constraints. | adjkant wrote: | Smaller point as most have covered the insanity of this, but am I | reading this right that they are paying 125K for adding a field | to some piece of data? I know government contracts can be bloated | and there can be complications that don't make it | straightforward, but give they itemized 3 separate fields and | charged 185 developer hours each for them, that's just either | insane gouging or blatant corruption right? That's nearly 400K | for three fields being added. | | https://media.kjzz.org/s3fs-public/styles/special_story_imag... | natas wrote: | I wonder what's the underlying software stack, mainframe? oracle? | up2isomorphism wrote: | "Software Bug Keeping Hundreds of Inmates in Arizona Prisons | Beyond Release Dates" - No, it is bureaucracy and corruption that | is Keeping Hundreds of Inmates in Arizona Prisons Beyond Release | Dates, and anyone who has the remotest idea about how such | contracts are awarded knows why. | tomcam wrote: | Happened to me! Probably wasn't a software error, and it was only | for a day. But it was in Seattle, and they simply forgot me. No | one brought food (even though my cellmate got it), no one | acknowledged it, no one answered when I tried to get the | officers' attention, no one ever had an explanation. Not fun. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-22 23:00 UTC)