Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Big Dufus Brother

One of the interesting things about talking to inmates about their prior criminal histories if you work for a DOC is that they will almost inevitably tell you about more offenses than you have a record of, in part usually because they've bought into the notion that the government really has this wonderful and all inclusive data system with them in it. LOL. Those of us who work with sentencing or corrections data, especially those coming from old legacy systems or dependent on local jurisdictions to supply, may be among the most skeptical (but not completely) about the data warehousing fears and how they may be used. We're not that good and neither are our systems, even if they have a bunch of stuff in them. We're getting better, but Big Brother is still a year or two off.

Want some proof? Well, our friend from AK (Alaska, not Arkansas) Teri Carns sends along this piece on the really "Cloverfield" nature of many of the city surveillance cameras out there and their, oh, maintenance problems. I do believe we need to be wary, trust me, but never count out Murphy and his Law. It's alive and well in crim just generally and corr sent specifically.

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