Pre-Crime Tool: Soldier Social Experimentation. What Are Your Thoughts?

It's statistical analysis. You can identify groups most likely to have issues, but not individuals.

It's the same reason 18 year old males pay more for car insurance than 25 year old females.

Per the article, there is a "disproportionate" amount of crime being committed by a subset of the community therefore we expend resources in an attempt to reduce it. It's not a "prediction model" however. It's much more of a risk management model, with an end goal of reduction.

Cpl (Join to see) - Interesting. While I certainly support trying to identify soldiers who need help with personal/emotional problems, I am not sure that targeting them by use of some experimental algorithm is such a good thing. Smacks of more social experimentation in the military. Looks to me like it can be used/abused in the future to limit an individual's rights, such as right to bear arms, etc.

"Those most at risk were young, poor, ethnic minorities with low ranks, disciplinary trouble, a suicide attempt and a recent demotion"

Wow. Those with severe attitude problems. Who could have ever predicted THAT?

In May of 2015, a Tribune investigation found that lead hazards are festering in the same parts of Chicago that have given the city a national reputation for violence and academic failure. In impoverished, crime-ridden neighborhoods like Austin, Englewood and Lawndale, more than 80 percent of the children tested in 1995 had dangerous lead levels. Many researchers say that lead exposure leads to crime. Wondering if this was one of the 400 + check boxes.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/watchdog/ct-lead-poisoning-science-met-20150605-story.html

They just found a way to not promote good leaders and instead fill leadership billets with more PC compliant, LGBT friendly, kinder, gentler "Yes" men who won't question unlawful orders received from incompetents... all under the guise of it being science. The elitists that run our government really do have the sheeple's best interests at heart.

Nope nope nope. I'm not saying we shouldn't invest time and energy into the psychological well-being of us service members, but they're not going about this the right way. It needs to be at an individual basis; even more so with those who were flagged for suicidal acts or attempts. They are way, way more subtle about their internal demons than any current or past training could indicate. It scared the hell out of me seeing just how normal suicidal individuals would act; whether they were in a comfortable environment or not.

Of course though that's just suicide. I digressed from the topic discussion. I think my point is we can't group together a pattern of violence from any particular group of people.

This sounds more like a TV series than real life.

"Those most at risk were young, poor, ethnic minorities with low ranks, disciplinary trouble, a suicide attempt and a recent demotion, according to a report published Tuesday in the journal Psychological Medicine."
Whew!!! Glad I proved them wrong... Oh, wait... I'm Air Force...

It's a good idea to identify at risk soldiers and do what we can to help them. However as with any study, it all depends on what the numbers actually are. The article states, "They found that the 5% identified as most at-risk were responsible for 51% of the violent crimes committed by those soldiers." This is from a sample of "all 975,057 soldiers who served during a six-year period", the article doesn't tell us how many of these soldiers were identified to be at risk, how many were were identified as being "most at risk", or how many crimes were committed as a whole. Data can be manipulated to support anyone's hypothesis, so I think we need to proceed with caution.

This article starts by talking about "at risk soldiers" Pre then states, "5% identified most at risk"
Let's pay attention to their words. OK so using the numbers listed in the article we can calculate that those identified as having committed specific crimes of (murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, robbery and other violent felonies not to include domestic violence and sex crimes) is a total of 5771. (ARE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AND SEXUAL OFFENSES NOT VIOLENT CRIMES?) The creators of this study are determining who they are keeping in their calculations and who is not, eliminating the portion which do not fit their criteria for the study. Next let's look at the numbers. What percentage of 975,057 is 5771. Well it is .005 percent or 5% so they have included all of those who committed a crime of their choice (not all crimes) in their study and there is not differential between soldiers who are at risk and soldiers most at risk.

"446 variables for each solider who served between 2004 and 2009. During that period, 5,771 soldiers committed murder, manslaughter, kidnapping, robbery or other violent felonies. (Domestic violence and sex crimes were not included in the study because research suggests that they follow risk patterns that are distinct from other types of offenses.)"

How can this report/study account for leadership? We've all seen units where service members ran amuck because the command wasn't engaged. We've also seen units where the command actually lead or provided leadership and there were little to no problems.

This sounds like a crock to me.