Data Scientists’ Say That Algorithms Can Keep People Out of Prison
- Dexlab Analytics

- Nov 7, 2016
- 2 min read

Steve Leifman always knew that Miami Dade’s court had some problems. About a decade ago, a long time jurist had realized that his country was putting a lot of people with mental health problems in jail. So he had set up a psychiatric training program for about 4,700 officers of the police and also set up a system to send people for counselling. As a result, the number of incarcerated people decreased significantly so much so, that even the country had to close an entire jail.
But despite all these efforts Leifman still believed that they were not doing enough, so he further made efforts to speak to the Florida Mental Health Institute to have a look at the intake data for the country’s prisons, mental health centres as well as hospitals to find out who was using the system.
What they discovered was surprisingly eye-opening, only 97 people which is 5 percent of the total jail population accounted for 39,000 days in jails and the hospitals. And their own they had accounted for USD 13 Million for the Miami-Dade.
So, it is evident that this population was really hitting the system very hard without any proper outcomes for the society, for themselves or for anybody else.
Around the country in the US the jails and prisons have become a repository for people having several kinds of mental health issues. More than half of all prisoners across the nation actually had some form of mental illness. Of which 20 percent were found to be in jails and 15 percent were found in the state prisons.
How can a data science certification help the situation?
Local criminal justice systems can use their data driven insights to figure out how to take care of these potentially complex patient situations, and how they can arrange to pay for the same.
How data harnessing systems like R language training is helping Leifman:
Leifman’s team set up a highly intensive system for care. Today they have 36 health care providers in the region of South Florida which have access to a database of people in clinics or shelters to determine who they actually are and what they really need. And proper implementation of privacy laws ensures its use is limited, but the main idea is to eventually help the database to widen the scope of the database and its availability to other trainers.
Moreover, such an algorithmic approach is going far beyond mental healthcare and it all depends on what you put into the database. Some places are making use of a predictive software to help determine how likely people are to reoffend which in turn will impact their jail sentences as well parole determinations. So, we definitely need proper predictive systems installed with ample transparency and oversight for them to work. Thus, further increases the demand for people with an R Predictive Modelling Certification.





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