Court system on'brink of collapse', former senior judge warns The court system is on the brink of collapse as the backlogs for trials reach unprecedented levels, the head of a major review has said. Sir Brian Leveson, a senior retired judge, warned ministers, the police and others that there could not be a pick and mix response to solving the crisis. Last year, in the first stage of the review, Sir Brian called for the right to a jury trial to be scaled back and many intermediate crimes to be dealt with by a judge alone. His second and final report has recommended 130 efficiency changes, from technical measures to allowing prison vans to use bus lanes to hit court appearance deadlines. Sir Brian's two reports were commissioned by ministers as part of an attempt to reverse the backlogs that had reached record levels before Labour came into power, but have continued to worsen since then.

Many incarcerated individuals face significant and complex challenges, including mental illness, substance dependence, and homelessness, yet jails and prisons are often poorly equipped to address these needs. With little support from the existing criminal justice system, these needs can remain untreated and worsen, often leading to further offenses and a cycle of incarceration with adverse outcomes both for the individual and for public safety, with particularly large impacts on communities of color that continue to widen the already extensive racial disparities in criminal justice outcomes. Responding to these failures, a growing number of criminal justice stakeholders are seeking to break this cycle through innovative approaches such as community-driven and alternative approaches to policing, mentoring, community building, restorative justice, pretrial diversion, holistic defense, and social service connections. Here we report on a collaboration between Johnson County, Kansas, and Carnegie Mellon University to perform targeted, proactive mental health outreach in an effort to reduce reincarceration rates. This paper describes the data used, our predictive modeling approach and results, as well as the design and analysis of a field trial conducted to confirm our model's predictive power, evaluate the impact of this targeted outreach, and understand at what level of reincarceration risk outreach might be most effective. Through this trial, we find that our model is highly predictive of new jail bookings, with more than half of individuals in the trial's highest-risk group returning to jail in the following year. Outreach was most effective among these highest-risk individuals, with impacts on mental health utilization, EMS dispatches, and criminal justice involvement.

Steven Pinker's new book shows how he's become a contradictory figure Steven Pinker's new book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows makes a compelling case for common knowledge. Steven Pinker argues that "cancel culture" is a form of censorship Steven Pinker's new book perfectly encapsulates what a contradictory figure he has become. Much of it is a clear, fascinating explanation of a major psychological phenomenon . But then he starts telling you what he thinks about current affairs. Pinker is a psychologist at Harvard University who has written a string of popular science books. Some, like Words and Rules, are rooted in his own research and are a good read.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing quickly and is being adopted in most industries. Using AI to draft an email message or check your grammar is typically not a cause for concern, but using it to make decisions that affect people's lives is another matter. When constitutional rights are involved, as in the justice system, transparency is paramount. During the Biden-Harris administration, Executive Order 14110 directed agencies to develop guidelines for acceptable uses and regulation of AI. Some of these uses, like summarizing and notetaking, will occur across the government.

Officer Wendy Venegas spoke softly in Spanish to the 14-year-old standing on the side of a narrow residential road in East Palo Alto. The girl's face was puffy from crying as she quietly explained what had happened. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. The girl said her father had caught her and her boyfriend "doing stuff" that morning, and her dad had either struck or pushed the boy, Venegas later explained.

As data-driven technologies transform the world and artificial intelligence raises questions about bias, privacy and transparency, Suresh Venkatasubramanian is offering his expertise to help create guardrails to ensure that technologies are developed and deployed responsibly. "We need to protect the American people and make sure that technology is used in ways that reinforce our highest values," said Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computer science and data science at Brown University. On the heels of a recently concluded 15-month appointment as an advisor to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Venkatasubramanian returned to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 4, for the unveiling of "A Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights: Making Automated Systems Work for the American People," during a ceremony at the White House. Venkatasubramanian said the blueprint represents the culmination of 14 months of research and collaboration led by the Office of Science and Technology Policy with partners across the federal government, academia, civil society, the private sector and communities around the country. That collaboration informed the development of the first-ever national guidance focused on the use and deployment of automated technologies that have the potential to impact people's rights, opportunities and access to services.

The problems with Clearview AI's facial recognition system, particularly in the hands of police, are myriad and serious. That the technology exists as it does at all raises significant ethical concerns, and how it has been used to feed people into the criminal justice system raises significant due process ones as well. But an article in the New York Times the other day might seem to suggest that it perhaps also has a cuddly side, one that might actually help criminal defendants, instead of just hurting them. But don't be fooled – there is nothing benign about the facial recognition technology pushed by Clearview AI, and even this story ultimately provides no defense for it. It was not the hero here, because the problem it supposedly "solved" was not the problem that actually needed solving.

As of this week, Tinder users will be able to run criminal background checks on their potential dates. The feature – launched in partnership with Garbo, a background check provider that aims to make public safety information more accessible – is intended to make Tinder users feel safer. But experts who specialize in sexual violence and surveillance have said the move is misguided, and risks amplifying the biases inherent in the criminal justice system. Background checks are blunt tools that gloss over some fundamental nuances, including that most people accused of sexual violence do not interact with the criminal justice system, said Albert Fox Cahn, the founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. Only 310 of 1,000 sexual assaults are reported to police, according to the anti-sexual violence organization Rainn.