Goodhart's Law & The Wire

[sus]

In 2014, a whistle-blower from the London police force told a parliamentary committee that massaging statistics had become "an ingrained part of policing culture": serious crimes such as robbery were downgraded to "theft snatch," and rapes were often underreported so as to hit performance targets. As a retired detective chief superintendent put it, "When targets are set by offices such as the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime, what they think they are asking for are 20% fewer victims. That translates into 'record 20% fewer crimes' as far as... senior officers are concerned." Such underreporting and downgrading of crimes "are common knowledge at every level in every police force within England and Wales," he added.

Well, were Simon & Burns right, or were Simon & Burns right?

Wire thread.

 

[sus]

 

[sus]

We have everything here: one player can afford to play honesty because he is not up for re-election or promotion, but is in fact exiting the game, and thus has no stakes in its future. Other players in the game are deeply invested and attempting to manipulate this future, and make demands about crime statistics in order to present a good image (optics) to whomever they answer to. (In an officer’s case, his superior; in the commissioner’s case, the mayor; in the mayor’s case, the voting public.)

 

[sus]

for y'all ignoramuses who can't be bothered to google

The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.

 

[luka]

They got it right but anyone who's been in the workforce over the last 20 years will have had direct experience of the same process. I worked in a department store where the sales targets were so unrealistic that any time a manager was exceeding expectations it was only ever a matter of time before the particular scam they'd developed was found out and they were sacked. why they were content to carry on in this way is beyond me.

 

[craner]

I worked in a department store

Wait, what? When, where?

 

[luka]

Wait, what? When, where?

David Jones, Bondi Junction. I was making coffee in the Food Hall for a few years.

 

[vimothy]

nice macroecon ref

 

[craner]

David Jones, Bondi Junction. I was making coffee in the Food Hall for a few years.

OK. For a minute I had this image of you selling shirts or trainers or something. Did you have sales targets for coffee?

 

[luka]

no. we were a concession. i wasn't employed by David Jones.

 

[craner]

Good Welsh name for shop, but I guess you were working in New South Wales.

 

[luka]

that's right!

 

[luka]

Craner comes from Crane and is thought to be a reference to long thin legs. Longshanks.

 

[craner]

Such a handsome, elegant bird.

 

[william kent]

They got it right but anyone who's been in the workforce over the last 20 years will have had direct experience of the same process.

Mark was on about this re: Ofsted in Capitalist Realism.

 

[william kent]

It happened with coronavirus testing too. They were counting tests mailed out alongside tests actually used in order to hit the target they set themselves.

 

[Corpsey]

It's occurred to me that The Wire speaks to luka's inquiries re: "structural" the other week.

The Wire is all about how individuals within a structured system can't really make free, moral decisions without paying for it, because the structure of that system – be it police force, the government, the media or organised crime – will fuck you up for stepping out of line.

[That's elementary, though, isn't it, dear watson, it was what Freud was on about in Civilisation and its Discontents, in a sense, too, and no doubt many other venerable thinkers before him, that you sacrifice personal liberty for the notable advantages offered by huddling together in communal structures]

 

[sus]

Mark was on about this re: Ofsted in Capitalist Realism.

Since OFSTED is now observing the college’s self-assessment systems, there is an implicit incentive for the college to grade itself and its teaching lower than it actually deserves. The result is a kind of postmodern capitalist version of Maoist confessionalism, in which workers are required to engage in constant symbolic self-denigration. At one point, when our line manager was extolling the virtues of the new, light inspection system, he told us that the problem with our departmental log-books was that they were not sufficiently self-critical. But don’t worry, he urged, any self-criticisms we make are purely symbolic, and will never be acted upon; as if performing self-flagellation as part of a purely formal exercise in cynical bureaucratic compliance were any less demoralizing.

Oh god

 

[sus]

It's occurred to me that The Wire speaks to luka's inquiries re: "structural" the other week.

The Wire is all about how individuals within a structured system can't really make free, moral decisions without paying for it, because the structure of that system – be it police force, the government, the media or organised crime – will fuck you up for stepping out of line.

[That's elementary, though, isn't it, dear watson, it was what Freud was on about in Civilisation and its Discontents, in a sense, too, and no doubt many other venerable thinkers before him, that you sacrifice personal liberty for the notable advantages offered by huddling together in communal structures]

And what's more, while this is what happens to the select few who step out (Colvin, McNulty, to some extent Stringer), everyone else is conforming because their entire system of incentives has been built for them. That this system has only meager overlap with what's actually good for the city of Baltimore, or a given victim etc, only matters if you have a conscience, which most members of bureaucratic systems learn quick to stamp out as a liability.

 

[Murphy]

@suspendedreason have you read any Giddens, Blair’s favourite on agency?