Status-Q

Here is a very nicely-constructed essay by Jane Bambauer, a Professor of Law at the University of Arizona.

“This essay”, she says, “does the unthinkable — it defends the police use of facial recognition technology to identify suspects in crime footage or to locate individuals with outstanding warrants.”

It’s a well-thought-out and very readable piece, and some of her key arguments are along the following lines:

• We currently have very harsh punishments for relatively minor crimes (especially in the USA). This high level of incarceration is not the best way to deal with the problems, especially since the success rates for rehabilitation are so low.

• We do this at present, though, because the crime detection rates are so low that it’s important that the penalties are very high if they’re to act as a disincentive.

• A much better and more progressive route is to detect much more crime and punish it less severely. This has been shown to be a much better disincentive, too. But technology is key to achieving any significant improvement in detection rates.

• Facial recognition technology is an important tool here and, though it has been shown to have problems with bias etc, it may actually be less biased than other forms of surveillance.

You may or may not agree with the above, but if you’re interested, it’s well worth reading the 9-page article before jumping to conclusions. (Many thanks to Charles Arthur for the link.)

So here’s a related question: would our roads be safer if everyone was fined a small amount every time they broke the speed limit, rather than receiving a severe penalty on the rare occasions when they were caught? I think the answer is clearly ‘yes’. Would you be willing to put up with having your speed monitored all the time in order for this to happen — as long as everybody else had to do the same, of course?