Right to Remain Silent | Hacker News Reader

Right to Remain Silent

thisamericanlife.org

116 pointsjbp13 comments

This is an excellent episode. The story of Adrian Schoolcraft is a great example of how data, when used to irresponsibly set quotas, can be abused.

Yes. It particularly shows an example of how bad incidents (e.g. bugs, serious offences) tend to be underreported or have their criticality misrepresented. I feel that whenever possible, these metrics should be used for strategic guidance, but the primary metrics for people in the field to follow should be positive ones—things that the team agrees will likely affect the negative metrics in a desirable manner: number of test cases, reviewed commit counts, emergency response times or serious lawbreakers caught in the act.

But many of the things that affect the final outcome may not be particularly measurable. Without expert knowledge of law enforcement I think that may be the problem with evaluating police officers' work. For example, conversations with citizens may prove to aid crime reduction and confidence in the police, but how do you quantify them in terms of nature and value?

It goes back to being careful what you measure, because it can be gamed. In this case, it was gamed to very unfortunate consequences.

The first segment reminds me of the "Sophomore Uses List Context; Cops Interrogate" story.

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/01/03/13/208259/sophomore-uses...

http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/UnixReview/col38.html

If you're interested in outrageous and/or senseless perversions of justice, go to http://reason.com and follow their Daily Brickbat. (You'll have to deal with the magazine authors being a bunch of Libertarians; naturally, you may or may not appreciate this.) A good number of incidents involve schools, of course.

Sample: 'Marshall Junior High School in Texas bars students from having "designs shaved into their hair." So when Sheldon Williams showed up for classes with lines shaved into his hair officials took a permanent marker and filled in those lines.' -- http://reason.com/brickbat/2011/10/18/thats-leave-a-mark

You may also want to follow Radley Balko who's focus is criminal justice & the legal system. He was at Reason for several years, he is now at Huffington Post.

In the first segment, why is the focus on his supposed irresponsibility of posting that joke to Facebook, instead of the braindead legislation that allowed this silliness to end up in court?

It's the nature of `This American Life`. it's not a show about politics, it's about individuals and their experiences.

It's sometimes about politics, but when it's about politics, they make the show about politics.

In any case, on-the-nose commentary about the legislation involved would be really boring in comparison.

The show is more about telling stories than informing people overtly about topics. However, in doing so often listeners end up becoming engaged in the story, and thus very much aware of the underlying issues. People listening to this are bound to wonder why such a thing would be occurring in our society.

What is this? I went there and they try to sell me some iPad app?

This American Life is a weekly public radio show broadcast on more than 500 stations to about 1.8 million listeners. It is produced by Chicago Public Media, distributed by Public Radio International, and has won all of the major broadcasting awards. It is also often the most popular podcast in the country, with around 700,000 people downloading each week.

They also have mobile apps, but you don't have to use them to download the episode.

Actually, the iPad/iPhone app is pretty unique as it gives you access to their entire library.

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