Man Jailed, Raped, and Beaten After False Facial Recognition Match, $10M Lawsuit Alleges::A 61-year-old man alleges that a facial recognition algorithm used a mugshot from the 1980s to ID him in a crime he didn’t commit.
Man Jailed, Raped, and Beaten After False Facial Recognition Match, $10M Lawsuit Alleges::A 61-year-old man alleges that a facial recognition algorithm used a mugshot from the 1980s to ID him in a crime he didn’t commit.
I don’t care if the facial recognition worked exactly as it was supposed to, with 100% accuracy (I know, we are in fantasy land here, but stay with this hypothetical), WTF? Nobody in jail deserves that. Also I’m thinking, does everyone who goes to that jail get beat up and gang raped? It just makes news if it’s the “wrong” guy?
There’s a great show on Netflix called ‘60 days in’. It’s silly and exploitative on the surface but read between the lines and you will learn a lot about the justice system in US. It’s basically designed to dehumanize and torture people with no presumption of innocence or any safeguards. The only goal is to punish as many people as possible. That’s what the society expects from it and people that run it are happy to deliver.
This is why I personally don’t believe in jail/prison. Rehabilitation, yes. Jail or prison? No. I’m no professional but I feel as though I have seen countless studies about how our prison system is a failure and how all it does is set people up to come back. That doesn’t even touch on private prisons and their financial incentives to get people back into the system.
I live in Spain and I remember seeing a story in the local newspaper about a guy complaining that he was released from prison before he could finish some professional course he was doing (he got ~2 year sentence). He said that outside of prison he can’t afford this type of education he was getting there for free. Just imagine, prison was actually offering him a way to a better job and life later. And that’s not even the famous Norway, just normal Spain. This is how it should work. Locking up people just so they suffer for a bit is sick and pointless.
Learning about norway made me a prison reformist, learning about the US prison system made me an abolitionist. I’m skeptical that the leviathan of the prison-industrial complex can be reformed.
Our system is so fucked up its insane. Inside, it’s terrible. Outside? Good luck getting a job with a criminal record. It’ll force you to steal to live, then you’ll be thrown back in.
Eric King is an ex political prisoner who has just recently been released, and he has been on a ton of leftist and anarchist podcasts in the past two or three weeks. His interview with The Final Straw Radio gives good insights on how halfway houses suck, and his interview with IGD is a good eye inside prison.
Fuck prisons, fuck cops, this shit sucks.
Unfortunately big issue is that ‘tough on crime’ resonates very well with the general public. 65% of Americans still believe death penalty is morally justified. There’s no hope for any reform if most people don’t want one.