prison
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Feminism
Racist Algorithms, Crime, and the Ethical Use of Data Prediction
ProPublica came out with an excellent piece this week by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kircher looking at the algorithms used by the US justice system to predict the recidivism rate of people at different stages within the justice system. These predictive scores, called risk assessment scores, are then used to determine things like sentencing and bail amounts,…
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Feminism
Hillary Clinton Is Not My Feminist Hero
An article has been making the rounds that shares a self-described “all-caps explosion of feelings” about the how the left has failed to support Hillary Clinton’s run for president. Amid important points about how Clinton criticism can often be sexist and Clinton’s gender makes her presidential campaign all the more challenging, there’s a troubling refrain: We all make mistakes. Give Hillary…
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Feminism
Guest Post: There’s More Than One Way for a Person to Be Illegal
Note: Ed Cara at Grumbles & Rumbles and Alexandra Brodky at Feministing (as well as many others) covered the issue of the rape and kidnapping victim who was arrested from a feminist, anti-rape perspective. One perspective that I found to be missing from the conversation is that of the homeless. When I engaged on the matter, it seemed that many did not…
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Religion
Morality on Trial: Why Prison Data Doesn’t Matter
In my previous post, I broke down the issues with prison statistics in the debate on secular morality. Here, I am going to turn my skeptical eye to the way people use and interpret said statistics. Why people bring up the (debatable) statistics that show that there are fewer atheists in prison than there ought to be seems obvious. When…
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Religion
Statistics on Trial, or Why Prison Data Matters
One of the questions that most people who live religion-free are tired of hearing is some variation on the classic inquiry as to “where” a person without faith would get her or his morality. That line of inquiry has been very adequately addressed by many, and I venture a humble guess that most Skepchick readers, secular or not, probably understand…
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