George Gascon

Removing racial information from police reports could reduce disproportionality

Using technology to remove racial information from police reports before prosecutors decide to file charges should reduce racial disparities in America’s justice system, former San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon says.

Gascon enlisted the aid of Stanford University computer programmers to devise an algorithm that disguises racial identities in the initial review of police reports.

“If we can take racial bias out of our system or reduce it significantly, we can be a much better nation,” Gascon said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle published June 13,

The “blind charging” tool was devised by Stanford’s Computational Policy Lab.

“When I first became district attorney, one concern was to understand how the criminal justice system impacts people of color disproportionately,” Gascon explained. “When I first became district attorney, one concern was to understand how the criminal justice system impacts people of color disproportionately,”

Gascon noted vast racial inequalities as they impact California’s criminal justice system and provided statistical data that demonstrates Blacks and Latinos continue to be arrested and criminally charged more frequently than Whites.

A 2016 study by the Public Policy Institute of California showed Latinos made up 41% of arrestees, Whites made up 36% of arrestees and Blacks made up 16% of arrestees. Blacks made up but 6% of the population.

A second study conducted between 2008 and 2014 revealed San Francisco’s disparity as a far greater chasm in racial divides than overall state findings. The study showed in San Francisco alone Blacks accounted for 41% of people arrested, but 6% of the population.

The second study was conducted jointly by UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania.

San Francisco’s current prosecutorial procedures after arrest are intended to minimize bias of the prosecution’s initial investigatory team. They do not examine evidence such as pictures or videos that would reveal a person’s race.

Upon recommendation to formalize charges, a second independent team of prosecutors verify if the evidence is substantial enough to move forward.

Gascon said the new technology could be used around the country.

The artificial intelligent technology will organize police reports and automatically redact the race of the parties involved. It will also scrub names of all parties involved including police, witnesses and suspects while hiding addresses, locations and neighborhoods that could imply a person’s race before it is reviewed by the district attorney’s office.

The district attorney said his office will implement the new tool in an estimated 80% of new general intake cases. Cases like homicide, domestic violence and other specialized units will not immediately use it.

The San Francisco Public Defender’s Office declined comment “until we can learn more,” an unidentified spokeswoman said. Amos Brown of the NAACP’s San Francisco branch said, “We don’t know anything about this.”

Since 2016 the district attorney has also sought to expedite the expungement of over 9,000 marijuana-related cases by partnering with Code for America.

Gascon has announced he will not seek reelection when his term expires at the end of the year.

San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon, a lead- er in restorative justice and social reform, has challenged the status quo again.

At the 14th annual Harry Frank Guggenheim Symposium at John Jay College in New York, the ex-police chief turned prosecutor, described the incarceration of people in both our county jails and state prisons as an entry into the “universities of crime.”

“We are more violent, collectively, than the people we’re afraid of,” said Gascon. “We get angry at people and throw them in jail and forget about them.”

Gascon reflected on his creation of Neighborhood Courts in 2012. The precedent-setting community justice system initiated the training of neighboring volunteers to hear non-violent misdemeanor cases.

This allowed the social web of a community to heal by empowering the Neighborhood Courts to engage with both the low-level offender and their victims to expedite a more thorough healing process for all involved.

After hearing the legal matters of a case, the representatives of the Neighborhood Courts issue “directives” to offenders about making amends. According to Megan Hadley of The Crime Report, the sanctions in the Neighborhood Courts included writing an apology letter, fixing damages caused and paying for damages.

Hadley also said, the district attorney believes victims are satisfied because they get to take part in the restorative process.

Not everyone agrees with the more holistic approach to punishment that Gascon envisioned when he created the Neighborhood Courts in 2012.

In fact, when he ran for re-election in 2014, police unions, whose income and retirements hinge on prosecution and incarceration, attempted to create political discord by objecting through local radio stations and social media.

The Crime Report revealed during Gascon’s re- election bid that the unions said, “Don’t expect the DA to do anything about victims of crime.”

Later, Gascon reflected on his department’s expungement of 9,000 marijuana cases once cannabis became legal in California. The first legal reversal of its kind in the nation, Gascon remembered, “I was criticized at first, but then people followed.”

Gascon defined the “universities of crime” approach when he spoke at the symposium, saying the public perception is that offenders “are not part of the rest of us” thus creating an “us against them” that puts them in the corner and “isolates them to the point of no return.”

Gascon concluded his speech by stating, “If crime is down, and incarceration is no longer doing it, why should we incarcerate people on the levels we do? Why?”

Addressing racial bias in the criminal justice system

San Francisco’s DA has challenged the status quo again