Crunching numbers to help predict human behavior is common practice in insurance, banking, and public policy. We are always looking for the perfect algorithm to help improve decision-making. But when those decisions involve the fate of families, and the potential removal of kids from their parents, data-driven predictions become the subject of intense debate. That was on vivid display last Tuesday at a panel in New York City on the use of so-called predictive analytics for investigating claims of child abuse and neglect.
Andrew White, the Deputy Commissioner for the city’s Administration for Children’s Services, distinguished his agency’s cautious embrace of predictive data from other methods being deployed by large cities nationwide, and indicated that his agency was interested in expanding its use of the tool.
“We are committed to using predictive analytics as carefully, ethically, and thoughtfully as we can,” said White, who began the session sympathizing with concerns from advocates for parents and children over how children are removed from black families at a vastly higher rate than from white families. “We need to make sure that whatever we are doing [with predictive analytics] does not worsen that disproportionality, and ideally improve it.”
[For more on this story by Michael Fitzgerald, go to https://chronicleofsocialchang...-child-welfare/31732]
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