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Comment by ghusto | Hacker News Reader

> the system was more likely to correctly identify men than women and it was “statistically significantly more likely to correctly identify black participants than participants from other ethnic groups”.

I am genuinely unsure what's going on.

My understanding of the article is that the system is problematic because it is more likely to correctly identify black people than "other ethnic groups". Is that right?

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It's problematic for use in Essex as it works best for a small minority of the Essex population and has a much higher error rate for a typical sample of the Essex community.

Adendum: Essex Ethnicity breakdown- 85.1% White British · 5.2% Other White · 3.7% Asian · 2.5% Black · 2.4% Mixed · 1.1% Other · (2021).

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex

ie: most accurate (however acccurate that is) for the men of 2.5% of the regions population

Not so accurate for 98.75% of the regions population.

Essentially (with made up numbers): 100 men on a high street, 4 of which are on a watch-list; 2 of which are black. Both black guys get identified, only one of the others does.

Ditto men vs. women, mutatis mutandis.

So it should be improved but sounds like it’s just catching criminals who need to be caught no?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_enforcement

Right so the answer is to improve enforcement not disable it and let more crime go unsanswred

The problem is that a likely outcome is that they will arrest two white men who are not the ones on the white list. That is discriminatory, at least if it keeps happening so that you get a higher rate of wrongful arrests of one group.

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