2 months ago
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PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: An algorithm is being developed to predict which criminals might later commit murder.
👥 Who’s Involved: Britain’s Ministry of Justice, Greater Manchester Police and other British police forces, and civil liberties group Statewatch.
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📍 Where & When: The United Kingdom; the project started in January 2023 and is believed to have been completed in December 2024 but is yet to be deployed.
💬 Key Quote: “Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for ‘predicting’ crime are inherently flawed,” noted Sofia Lyall from Statewatch.
⚠️ Impact: Concerns about bias and the ethical implications of using such predictive models on vast datasets, including from communities already facing structural discrimination.
IN FULL:
The British Ministry of Justice is advancing in its initiative to create an algorithmic tool aimed at predicting which individuals convicted of crimes might escalate to committing homicide. Known internally as the Homicide Prediction Project, the undertaking emerged through Freedom of Information requests from the civil liberties group Statewatch, which flagged the project as concerning.
Expanding on risk-prediction systems already in place, the project is designed to build upon frameworks such as the Offender Assessment System (OASys), which has been used since 2001 to forecast recidivism and inform legal decisions. However, the broad scope of data in this new model has raised red flags. Data utilized, sourced from various police and government bodies, potentially includes information on up to half a million people, some without any criminal history.
Despite officials’ assertions that the project remains in a research phase, uncovered documents allude to future deployments. Sources claim increased collaboration across government agencies and police forces, such as Greater Manchester Police and the Metropolitan Police, to enhance the dataset driving these predictions.
Statewatch has raised ethical concerns about the predictive model’s potential for systemic bias. The British state has already attempted to introduce guidelines that were explicitly two-tier and would have seen ethnic minorities prioritized for bail over white men in the country.
Statewatch’s Sofia Lyall described the algorithm project as “chilling and dystopian,” calling for an immediate cessation of its development. “Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for ‘predicting’ crime are inherently flawed,” he said. She highlighted the risk algorithms pose in creating profiles of potential criminals before any crime is committed.
PULSE POINTS:
❓What Happened: A violent incident occurred in His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Frankland where Manchester Arena terrorist Hashem Abedi attacked three prison guards. In response, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s government has suspended kitchen use in prison separation centers.
👥 Who’s Involved: Hashem Abedi, who played a role in the 2017 Manchester Arena bombing, and three prison guards.
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📍 Where & When: The attack took place at HMP Frankland, one of two so-called separation centers for the most dangerous convicts, on Saturday.
💬 Key Quote: “In our view, [Abedi] should not be allowed any privileges whatsoever while serving a sentence for the deaths of 22 innocent lives and the injuring of many more,” relatives of the Manchester Arena attack’s victims wrote in a letter to the authorities. “He should not have access to anything that he can weaponize, such as hot oil or items he can turn into blades.”
⚠️ Impact: Two male guards remain in hospital with “potentially fatal” injuries, with one suffering a severed artery in his neck and another being left with a punctured lung. A female officer, left with third-degree burns after Abedi threw hot oil on her, was discharged from hospital on Sunday.
IN FULL:
Following a serious assault on prison staff by Hashem Abedi, the brother of Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi, at His Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Frankland, kitchen use in certain prison “separation centers” has been temporarily suspended. The incident occurred Saturday at HMP Frankland, where Abedi, already serving a life sentence, reportedly attacked three guards. Two male victims suffered “potentially fatal” injuries and remain hospitalized, while a female guard received third-degree burns. Abedi had melted down hoarded butter sachets into hot oil to attack her, according to sources.
Abedi was involved in his brother’s 2017 suicide bombing of an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena, England. Twenty-two people, many of them young girls and parents, were murdered, and over 1,000 were injured, some critically.
This latest attack unfolded after Abedi accessed kitchen areas at the prison’s separation center, which accommodates some of Britain’s most dangerous inmates. The prison officers’ association detailed how the jihadist launched an attack using hot oil and homemade blades crafted from cooking trays.
Abedi has since been transferred to another high-security separation site. The Ministry of Justice announced a comprehensive investigation into the attack, affirming their commitment to reviewing and potentially revising security protocols in response to the breach. However, this is already Abedi’s second documented attack on prison staff, following a previous attack on two guards at London’s HMP Belmarsh in 2020.
The Manchester Arena bombing followed a series of catastrophic state failures, beginning with the decision to grant the Abedi brothers’ Libyan father asylum despite the fact he was a known Islamist. Salman Abedi had been flagged to both MI5—the domestic security agency—and Greater Manchester Police multiple times, but no meaningful action was taken.
On the night of his attack, the concert was not being covered by police due to officers taking an unauthorized multi-hour dinner break. Security guards at the arena also failed to act when Abedi, who was observed performing prayers and behaving erratically while wearing a gigantic backpack at the scene, was reported to them because they were “scared” they would be “branded racist” if they approached him.
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