(Sections to read: "I: INTRODUCTION" and "IV. THE PROBLEM: OVERBROAD JUDICIAL DISCRETION AND IMPLICIT RACISM," "V. JURY SENTENCING: A POTENTIAL SOLUTION," and "VI. THE PROBLEM OF BIASED JURIES")

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing. Assuming it is a team of designers and programmers, I would hope that combined value judgement of the designers match up with the general values of the community. If the judgment proves controversial (which will most of the time), then that leaves room for human input.

I would trust the ingenuity of multiple people working on this project, than one judge. Maybe I'm being too pessimistic about humanity, but I don't trust humans to be completely objective. Or maybe I'm being too optimistic about the artificial intelligence's capacity to be objective and fair.

I read somewhere that the judgment of court could even be influenced by whether or not they ate a meal. It's called "the hungry judge effect" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_judge_effect#:~:text=The%20hungry%20judge%20effect%20is,on%20economic%20and%20social%20behavior.

If the outcome a suspect's life could be determined by a judge's breakfast, it makes me question if humans are truly right and objective to judge. Maybe Ai could be explored a little more. Humans are too inconsistent.

What pains and pleasures have in common are their relations to our desires.

This is where the system shines best. Not as a replacement for lawful authority, but as an alternative option for help. The system was nothing like how I thought it would be before reading the article. My final consensus is that, if done by the right people, this could be a good thing for the community. A problem I have with a lot of officers is that many tend to be on a power trip because they have the authority. That problem doesn't exist with this neighborhood policing system, because in truth, the alliance doesn't have any authority. They are just people from the community trying to help. And I think that's cool. I hope to see more communities adopt this system. I want to see what would come of it.

That's it right there. With all due respect to the man, I would not trust a man who tried to rob and shoot up a bodega yesterday to be in charge of our safety today. He likely did a good job as a volunteer and maybe his circumstances were rough, but I think it is reasonable to be skeptical.

I don't see any harm done with the system they made so far. I was under the impression that letting the neighborhood police themselves would be something like the Old Frontier, where the law is hardly involved at all. Still though, I wonder if the system would still work if the person keeping the peace wasn't cool and collected like Bigga. Would an impulsive peacekeeper from the community be able to deescalate a crime?

This approach of the police department and civilians working together is a very good idea. That way, the neighborhood-watch are bound by some rules, while also giving the citizens autonomy to take care of their home in a way they seem fit, free from external biases.

Before I continue reading, I want to give a few thoughts. I think the premise of neighborhood policing is interesting. As of now though, I don't support the idea. Law enforcement right now is flawed because, in my opinion, it is way too easy for officers to not apply their training in practice. This leads to incidents of the police thinking they are above the law, or the police becoming bullies in some sense. Just this year, 17 officers of my local police department got fired, and almost half are on leave for admitting and bragging about racial profiling and targeted assault https://abc7news.com/antioch-police-scandal-racist-texts-chief-fbi-investigation/13516343/. That's the thing though, there was some sort of justice in the end to be expected because we are protected by the law, and corrupt officers are supposed to be bound by it. They don't always follow it, but they are trained to. That's what makes me feel safe, not the actual officers, but the code they are supposed to follow and the consequences of breaking it. However, that safety is undermined if we were to just rely on our neighbor to protect us. Joe, or Bill, or Sarah or whatever your neighbor's name is not bound any code, let alone trained to follow it. I think corrupting the neighborhood "police" would also be much easier because they aren't attached to any departartment of justice, so it would be easier to get away with having loose rules and morals. I'm opened to get my mind changed though.