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Correcting Bad Information on Social Media-Craig Silvermen

June 7, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

Listen to the radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/07/social-media-during-emergencies-craig-silverman-buzzfeed/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s topic: social media during emergencies. Does government have the ability to correct bad information?

I am honored today to have Craig Silverman. He is the founding editor of Buzzfeed Canada. He is at Twitter, @Craigsilverman. To say that this is an extraordinarily important topic is an understatement. Craig wrote a document; Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content. It was funded by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Knight Foundation. Throughout this radio show of great importance, and immense complexity, I want us to focus on 3 things: A. How do we address misinformation? B. What can we do about misinformation, and C. If we had a dirty bomb that went off in your area, we practiced this all the time when I was with the Maryland emergency management, what are the implications for public safety and the surrounding area? Craig, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Craig: Thank you so much for having me.

Leonard: I am honored to have you. With the world economic forum in 2014 according to your report, top trends, viral misinformation. The world economic forum is saying viral misinformation is one of the top trends in the world, correct?

Craig: Yes, that’s right. It made their list of the people that they had asked to fill out a survey. People from around the world put that in the top 10.

Leonard: That’s amazing. Misinformation regardless as to it’s an emergency or not, is standard practice in today’s media world. Is that correct?

Craig: Absolutely. When you have a world of decentralized media, where people can easily publish instantly from a smart phone, can easily start to make something gather attention and vitality through social networks, we end up getting a lot of stuff that circulates that simply isn’t true. There have always been rumors. People have always traded information that had a questionable level of voracity, or was in that early emerging stage where you don’t know if it’s true or not. What happens today is these natural human tendencies that we have to pass along information, to share information, it can really go like wildfire because we live in a network society. There’s a huge amount of misinformation that gets out there. It can very easily be seen as true by a lot of people, and once it starts fooling influential folks, such as people in the press, or people in influential positions and government or other places, then it really starts to be seen as true. It’s a big priority, I think, in newsrooms to do a better job of understanding the dynamics of rumor and misinformation, and I think for the folks that you talk to, and in the roles that you’re in, it’s also critically important.

Leonard: It’s compounded during an emergency if we have a hard time correcting bad information on Facebook and Twitter, and the other social media platforms. If it gets into newsrooms, newsrooms end up repeating it. On a day to day basis, that’s a tough nut to crack. When there’s an emergency, if I’m driving in my car, when I was with Maryland Emergency Management, equipped lights and sirens. They say there’s a problem, I have to drive to the problem where we’re setting up a media briefing center, and while driving, and it’s going to take me an hour and a half to get there under the best of circumstances, the rumor goes off that there’s a dirty bomb. I don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of putting out that rumor. I mean, I’m driving to the scene. During an emergency, this stuff flows fast and furious.

Craig: Absolutely, it does. Obviously my area of expertise is not in emergency management, but the first thing that comes to mind to me as you’re describing that scenario is there are certainly some physical responsibilities, in person communication, going to scenes, evaluating what’s going on. There’s that piece of it, and I would hope that people involved in this world also think about setting up social media command centers to a certain point, to monitor the information that’s coming out of that specific area where a disaster might have happened, or there are reports of a disaster. Also looking at the larger networks and monitoring key words and other things to see what people are talking about. There’s a two-fold purpose in it. This has some overlap with newsrooms. On the one hand, there were people who are just simply closer to the problem, closer to what’s going on than you are, if you’re in your car driving over, what have you. They may have access to a smart phone, they may be on Twitter, they may be on Instagram. There’s a hug amount of information that could be coming out in real time, from the critical area, or from people who have a certain level of expertise and knowledge. They may be going to social networks to put that out there.

The other side of it, aside from gathering information, you want to use these channels to push out quality information. I think that through both of those things, the monitoring of information, you should be looking at rumors and claims that are out there, and trying to triangulate the information, and compare it to the information that you have coming in from your other sources. On the other side in terms of communicating information, you want to think about, we know this rumor is circulating. We know that it’s true, we know that it’s false, or maybe we don’t know whether it’s true, what can we put out to give some context and to help in the process of people understanding and making sense of the situation. I think in the scenario you described, you’re in the car driving as fast as you can to get there, I would hope that there are colleagues who are really monitoring social media. Not only to gather additional information to provide to you as you give you’re briefings, or what have you, but also to really see if there are things that are starting to take flight that may not be true, or that you really need to look more into to see whether they’re true or not.

Leonard: Even when it’s not during an emergency, I would contend that most of us in emergency management throughout the United States, most of us within the criminal justice system throughout the United States, we do not have these special I-teams to do that analysis. The question becomes whether or not we are all sophisticated enough and do we have our own personal social media accounts, and do we have enough of them? It may be Twitter, it may be Facebook, but it could be an endless number of others that are putting out this misinformation. It would take somebody savvy, it would take somebody who already has social media accounts, and it would take an almost instantaneous network to begin to compare notes, before we could put out these fires.

Craig: Yeah. This is one of the things that it goes to a point that’s really, really important. I worked on a project with the European Journalism Center, something called the verification handbook, where it was a document oriented towards newsrooms, but also humanitarian workers, helping them verify information in real time in emergency scenarios. One of the things that became very clear is as we talked to journalists with the Australian broadcasting Corporation, she talked about their experience with wildfires in Australia. I’m sure that this probably isn’t news to you, but one of the things that became very clear from talking to her is what you do before the emergency happens dictates how well you’re going to handle it and cover it in the moment.

In these scenarios, rather than trying to figure out who on the team has got social media accounts or what have you, obviously it has to become part of the planning process. What are the channels we’re going to use? What are the ones that are most important to use in terms of getting news out in real time? I would say that Twitter is a very important one, because that’s where people tend to look for real time information.

Leonard: Yeah.

Craig: Facebook is obviously where the most amount of people are. Facebook is doing a lot of work to be seen as more real time, and more hospitable to real time, so a Facebook page is also really important. I think setting this stuff up ahead of time of, where are we going to communicate this information, who is going to own these channels, and what are we going to use these channels for? Those are really, really important things to think about much sooner than before you get the reports that a dirty bomb has gone off. Figuring out who on the team has expertise in this area, figuring out what accounts exist or need to be set up, and then how you’re going to use those. Those are just as important as all the other pieces of preparation that are going to be done, because not only is it important for, again, getting the information out, but if people know this is a trusted source, and a place where good information is coming from, then they may actually bring intelligence and information to you, and it becomes a place where people can start to contribute. It again gets that kind of two-way thing going, which is really, really important and useful.

Leonard: I think you would agree that there’s no piece of technology out there that that’s going to solve this. I’ve been also looking at magazines and different companies are offering emergency social media analysis hardware/software. I don’t think this is a matter of hardware/software. I think this is a matter of, as you said before, preparation, having trained people in place, and the ability to instantaneously sit at a computer and analyze social media and instantaneously contact each other. This is something that’s not going to involve one or two or three people, this is something that’s going to involve in some cases, up to 20 or 30 people who can instantaneously drop what they’re doing, go to the computer, start searching hash tags, start sharing information with each other. That involves a pretty high degree of sophistication and preparation and technology that they have to have with them practically at all times.

Craig: Yeah. You need an internet connection, and things like say Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite, or things like that in terms of the tools, but there is a lot of it that goes down to training and expertise. Just a lot of it that is the human factor. You need to have access and basic knowledge of the tools, but you also need to have people who are well trained. I think actually a small group of people can achieve a lot. The larger you get, once you get beyond say five people, it becomes very hard to coordinate those folks. You might have people duplicating effort in the scenario of monitoring social media and analyzing it. Ideally, you have some specialists in this area who can get on that wan watch for it. I think there’s the technology piece, but what you bring up is kind of the human piece of it, and that’s really, really important when we’re talking about rumors and misinformation.

There are some really basic human needs that are filled by rumors. That’s why we have so many of them, particularly in emergency and disaster scenarios. When humans lack a certain amount of information, when it’s a very confusing scenario, and there’s lots of conflicting information, what we try to do, is we try to make sense of the world. It makes us very uncomfortable to not have information, especially in a critical scenario. It’s very tough for our brains to process conflicting information. What we naturally try to do is to make sense of this scenario, and that often causes us as we talk with other people to come up with, “well, maybe it’s because of this, or maybe it’s because of that.” We all put our pieces of information together, and that’s where we start to create and propagate rumors. It’s important for everyone to understand that there is this human need that rumors can often fill, especially in emergency scenarios, where there’s a real, imminent threat there. Understand that rumors aren’t necessarily people who are trying to put out false information, it’s people who mean well who are engaging in this process of sense-making, trying to figure it out.

Especially when it’s hurricanes or things like that, and there’s high anxiety. It actually is a coping mechanism in a lot of ways for us to fill in the gaps, the things that we don’t have, the information we don’t have, to put that out there. You’ll see this happening on Twitter and on social media, is people asking questions, interacting with each other, latching on to little scraps of information that come out that seem to make sense to them that they then propagate. I think that everyone should have a basic understanding of why rumor is such a basic human element, particularly in these scenarios. Whenever you have things like bombings, or hurricanes, natural disasters, they’re going to be there. It’s the human engine, emotions and brains and those kinds of things that are driving these rumors. Tools and technologies are important, but understanding human behavior is always really, really big in this kind of scenario.

Leonard: There’s also sources of purposeful misinformation. One of the things when I was learning how to do green screen television, is that I realized that I could buy readily available footage from elsewhere, I can do a green screen television shoot, and it will look exactly like any other news program. It will look and feel and smell and taste like a real news program, and I can purposely put out misinformation, and sites purposefully putting out misinformation. I refer to the photos of sharks swimming in the streets of Sandy Hook after Hurricane Sandy. We have that level of a complexity to deal with as well.

Craig: Yes, absolutely. One of the things in the research that I focused on were what I called fake news websites. These are websites where somebody’s taken a basic WordPress template or web template and it looks like a real news website. The articles are written with a newsy voice and tone to them, but everything on the website is fake. What I saw in my research was that they could have articles that could get hundreds of thousands of shares, driving a significant amount of traffic. What their strategy basically is, they’re trying to monetize on gullibility. They come up with fake articles about celebrities, or about what I saw when Ebola was a real threat in the United States, they did a lot of fake articles. One of them reported that an entire Texas town had been quarrantined because a family had contracted Ebola. Completely fake, of course. It got a huge amount of shares. Of course, that sends people to their website, they have ads on their pages, and they earn money that way.

There are certainly people who are conscientiously trying to spread misinformation, whether it’s fake news websites doing it to earn money, or perhaps there are people who have a malicious intent and other ways. That’s certainly something that’s going to emerge and come out there. Sometimes though, people are spreading fake information, but it’s not necessarily with malicious intent. This is a really hard thing particularly for journalists to understand, because why would somebody put out something that was fake? The answer that a lot of these hoaxers give, is that again, it’s a stress relief for them to just put a joking image. Unintentionally they put it out thinking everyone will know it’s a joke and have a laugh, but people start to take it and treat it as real.

Again, there’s this release valve that people need in these very anxiety inducing scenarios where they’ll often put something out like that. It is something to be aware of. It’s important to be aware that rumors are absolutely going to emerge in these scenarios. A hundred percent guaranteed, in an emergency response scenario, natural disaster scenario, what have you, rumors will abound. No question about it. There will also be people who intentionally or otherwise put out misinformation.

One is the monitoring aspect of this. The second piece where journalists also really need to raise their skill level, is the verification piece of it. You see a tweet, and somebody’s made a claim, how do you figure out if that’s true or not? This is a skill area where the more people who can know how to use some tools and some basic approaches to figure out whether it’s true or false, the better off we’re all going to be as a society.

Leonard: There’s a fascinating part of your report where basically you’re saying that there’s an economic model for anything that delivers clicks to a website and that the incentives are all wrong, which is one of the reasons why we’re having this problem to begin with.

We’re more than halfway through an extraordinarily entertaining and informative program. Ladies and gentlemen, Craig Silverman is by our microphones. Founding editor of Buzzffed Canada. You can reach him a Twitter @craigsilverman. The report itself, Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, again funded by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Knight Foundation. Extraordinarily fascinating read. Find it on the internet if you are interested in rumor control, if you’re interested in emergency management, you must go to the website and get Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, and read it.

Craig, we have a 30% reduction in reporters over the last 10 years. Where we’ve relied upon media in the past to assess rumors and correct information internally, their ranks have been depleted tremendously. The reporters who I work with are doing more than ever before with less than ever before. The media that we counted on in the past to verify and to figure out what is correct information and what is incorrect information with our help from people who are directly at the scene. Because of their fewer numbers, it’s very hard for them to complete this task. It’s very hard for them to be the gatekeeper.

Craig: It is. The reason I do things like the verification handbook and the Lies, Damn Lies report, is because I see that there’s a lack of these skills in the newsroom. Of the journalists that are left, they absolutely are overloaded with different things, and they haven’t been given training in verification of social media content and things like that. I think you do have to in these scenarios, look at newsrooms as an important channel and partner in these things. I also do think that you have to look at the reality that you just articulated, and say we are going to be a source as well. We’re not just going to feed things through the media. We have to be able to be a credible, reliable, consistent source ourselves. I think that’s a really important thing to realize and to think about what that’s going to take in terms of resources and training on your own.

All that being said, a piece of advice we give to newsrooms in terms of preparing for disaster coverage is you need to think about all of the critically important government agencies, first responders, experts in your area and you need to create a line of communication with them ahead of time. I think it goes both ways in that, absolutely you should be thinking about who are the newsrooms, AP being one that’s all over the country, so how do we get a direct line into AP to make sure we’re communicating with them well. Thinking about locally, who are the critical local sources as well, and setting up those lines of communication to say when we have something important, we’re going to get it to you in this form. For the journalists, to tell them and say when you have an important question, when you know something, here is how you get that to us. I think when we’re talking about these kinds of scenarios of emergency situations, some of the mutual suspicion or distrust that tends to be there, it recedes a little bit because everybody’s in it together just trying to get the best possible information out to the public as possible. To tell the people who need to evacuate that they need to evacuate, and to make sure that it’s not a false order. And so on.

I think that you’ll find in these scenarios, newsrooms do want to be a very good partner. Figuring out the method of communication, helping them understand what kind of information they can rely on from your particular office, and which other places they might need to go for other information is very important. Then of course thinking about how you are going to get your information, not just out through the media, but through like we talked about; a Twitter account, a Facebook page, other means to make sure that it’s getting out there as much as possible.

Leonard: Bottom line is that we have to have a core of digital specialists who are extremely sophisticated about social media. Extremely sophisticated in terms of following the media, who already have these accounts set up, who are ready to go at a moment’s notice. What you’re saying is, is that we can do it with a small number. Let’s just say 1-10, we have to be digital specialists. We have to really know social media. We have to know its implications, we have to know who’s out there, and we have to be on the various platforms. I agree with you with Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram is rising in popularity more than anybody ever anticipated, and others. Periscope. There’s all sorts of things out there that are just exploding and we have to be knowledgeable of them all. We in the media, and we within government, and we within emergency management must become digital media experts.

Craig: Absolutely. You have to think like a newsroom in some ways, particularly when there’s an active scenario going on. You have to think about how you’re communicating the information. One of the other pieces that’s really important and this is talked about in the report, is deciding at what point you’re ready to communicate a piece of information.

Newsrooms, what I was talking about in the sense of there’s so much information that’s circulating online and circulating on social networks, and it may have news value and it may be of interest, and it may get them clicks, but what newsrooms have to figure out is, what’s your bar for when you’ll actually cover something? Do you need to have it 100% nailed down? Or will you just take anything that’s circulating and put some [hedging 00:21:58] language in, and saying, “Well, this is popular on Reddit, we don’t know if it’s true, but have a look at this photo.” I think it’s important for government agencies and communicators as well to think about that. Okay, so if we’re going to be a source of information in this scenario, what level of voracity, what level of conformation do we need to put something out? Are we only going to put out stuff that is 100% nailed down, or are we actually going to engage and say, “There’s a rumor circulating that this is happening in this area of the city, as of right now we have no information to confirm that.”

Thinking about how you’re going to engage on that level is I think a really important thing. Overall, yeah. I think that there’s no way to do this kind of work today without having people on your team who are social media savvy, who are good at monitoring, who are good at assessing, who are good at verifying, and who are good at communicating. These are absolutely core skills. There are definitely tools and things that can help you, but a lot of it comes down to human decision making and figuring out what you’re processes are and what you’re standards are, just like newsrooms have to do.

Leonard: Even in your report, when you mentioned Larry King, he criticized CNN his own network in terms of Flight 370, the Indonesian airliner that went down. He criticized their coverage of that as absurd. We say in the report that there is an economic model, that anything that drives clicks to a website, the incentives, fiscal incentives, financial incentives are all wrong. This is a challenge. This is a challenge for media, it’s a challenge for us to put it together, and guess what you’re saying is, is that not only must we train amongst ourselves, we’ve got to get together with media and figure all this out ahead of time, and have a protocols in place so bad information doesn’t get out information that’s going to harm literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people.

Craig: Absolutely. Yeah. That preparation piece. We keep coming back to it because it’s so essential. For the folks that this particular conversation is targeted at, I don’t know that their incentives are as misaligned as they are in a lot of newsrooms in the sense that a lot of digital newsrooms value the number of views and clicks you get, and if you take the extra time to nail something down and find out that it’s not real, then you get no clicks for that, because you haven’t gotten the story. Other people may get it first. In newsrooms, what they have to re-calibrate is what do we value? Do we value getting the most clicks on a story, or do we value being the ones who’ve said, “No, no, no. This story is fake,” and putting that out there and showing that we’re trusted and building that up over time.

I work at BuzzFeed now. I Joined BuzzFeed after I did the fellowship that led to the report we’re talking about. For me. BuzzFeed obviously is a huge organization, drives a huge amount of traffic, covers a huge amount of stuff that’s viral. What I saw before I joined, is a shift that had been happening culturally internally at BuzzFeed over the last couple of years, whereby rather than just finding anything and being first to it and getting it up first, the culture had shifted towards asking questions, reaching out, doing verification, and not having fake stuff on the site. A more journalistic culture has taken hold, and BuzzFeed as they’ve been hiring people and news.

I don’t know exactly what the incentives are in the world of the folks who are here, but I assume that there’s probably not as much pressure around clicks, and far more to be lost in terms of reputation if a government agency or a specialized company doing emergency response is putting out fake information. That is a game changer for them, whereas a single journalist, if they make 1 mistake they can move on. For a government agency putting out false information in an emergency, that’s almost game over, because of the amount of credibility it has.

Leonard: In the final minutes of the program, and there’s so much I wanted to get to but I’m not going to be able to get to it today. The more we care about a rumor, the more we have a stake, the more we participate in that rumor, the more we care about a topic, the more like we are to spread rumors, and the more likely we are to believe it’s true. We cherry pick information that we hear, that we come into contact with, and if it fits our preconceived notion of the world, there’s a good possibility that we will spread that rumor. We will believe it and spread it. Part of this is the psychology of the people who are reading and assessing this for themselves, and what you’re warning is that you’ve got to be very careful in debunking the rumor. You cant go after the person, you have to to go after the facts. There is a strong set of psychological principles that apply.

Craig: Yes. There’s a lot going on here in terms of why somebody would choose to propagate a rumor. If it aligns with existing knowledge and existing beliefs that they have, they are more likely to believe it and to propagate it. If it fits with suspicions they have, if it fits with their worldview, again they’re more likely to put it out there. They’re more likely to believe it. Another thing that people should note also about rumors, there is often a connection between repetition and believability. The more that someone is exposed to rumor, the more that any skepticism they might have about it starts to erode.

There have been studies about the number of times somebody was exposed to a rumor they start to believe it even more.

Leonard: That’s amazing.

Craig: It is. It just shows how important it is that so many of us news organizations, government communicators and other communicators, how we understand that we have to get out there early. When we see things, we have to talk about it and engage and warn people off of this stuff.

Then that gets us into the realm of debunking that you brought up. Which is, how do you do this effectively without in effect, repeating the rumor so much that people still ignore your debunking. One, as you mentioned, is people who pushed out a false rumor, you don’t want to attack them, you don’t want to personalize it. You want to debunk the idea and not the person is what people often say. That’s very important. Don’t go around shaming people. Make it easy for them to let go of this thing that they put out there and that they believed. It’s also really important to try to minimize the amount of times you’re repeating the false information. You want to express the truth in a more positive way.

A small example of this, rather than saying Barack Obama is not a Muslim, you would want to say Barack Obama is a Christian. That’s the more positive reinforcement of the correct information. It’s also important of course to get out there early. It’s important to do it in a positive way, to not attack people. It’s important to think about how you can connect with other trusted sources to get this information out there. What I mean by that is, if somebody is propagating a rumor because it aligns with say a political belief, a personal belief, some kind of orientation. If you can get other organizations that person might be perceived to be as aligned with their beliefs, and have that organization help you with pushing out the debunking, then you’ve got a much better chance of getting it out there. If they have suspicion about the government, then you should talk to other local organizations that aren’t seen as government organizations to get them to push it out there as well, whether that’s a red cross, or a local chamber of commerce. Think about all these different channels, how people who might be skeptical of government, might actually listen to one of these other channels.

Leonard: All right. Craig, you’ve got the final word. There’s so much here to discuss. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re interested in emergency management, if you’re interested in relations with the media, if you’re interested in rumor control, please go to Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, easily found on the internet. It is one of the most fascinating reads that I’ve had within my 40 years within the criminal justice system. We’ve talked to Craig Silverman today. Twitter @craigsilverman, founding editor at BuzzFeed Canada. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments. We even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

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Community Corrections Technology-National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center

August 11, 2014 by

Welcome to “DC Public Safety” – Radio and television shows, blog and transcripts on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

The portal site for “DC Public Safety” is http://media.csosa.gov.

Radio Program available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2014/05/community-corrections-technology-national-law-enforcement-corrections-technology-center/

[Audio Begins]

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes, back at our microphones, Joe Russo. The program today is focusing on community corrections technology. Always a joy to have Joe back at our microphones. Joe is with the University of Denver and he currently serves as the Director of Corrections Technology Center of Excellence, a program within the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center. Joe, welcome back to DC Public Safety.

Joe Russo:  Hi, Len, always a pleasure to be with you.

Len Sipes:  Always a pleasure to have you. You are by far I think one of our most popular shows that we’ve had in the past. So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to be talking about a variety of issues today, satellite tracking, we’re going to be talking about drug and alcohol testing, leveraging video conferencing, which I find really exciting, officer safety developments, and social media, the development of an issue paper with the American Probation and Parole Association. Joe, let’s start off with satellite tracking. What’s happening there?

Joe Russo:  Well, I just want to make your audience aware that NIJ, National Institute of Justice funded a project to develop standards for offender tracking systems is ongoing and approaching completion. This standard is the first of its kind and was designed by practitioners, practitioner informed process, to establish performance standards, robustness standards, safety and circumvention detection standards around these systems. These systems have been in existence for quite some time and there is no industry standard for these devices. And so NIJ thought it was important based on practitioner input and created a project to develop these standards and these are nearing completion in the new future. And the next step is we’ll be evaluating some of the test methods that we’ve developed to make sure that they’re efficient and effective and the most appropriate way to go about evaluating these tools and making sure that they’re up to par for public safety use.

Len Sipes:  And we at the Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, my agency, here in Washington DC, we’ve been instrumental in developing those standards, correct?

Joe Russo:  Yes. In fact Carlton Butler, who I believe recently retired from your agency was one of the members of our special technical committee and he was very instrumental in that process. Carlton was one of a number of community corrections professionals from across the country who came together regularly to discuss their needs around offender tracking technology, where the technology was lacking and what standards should be in place to protect the public.

Len Sipes:  Now, the interesting thing is that, let me throw out a couple observations and tell me if I’m correct or incorrect, satellite tracking, GPS satellite tracking is exploding within this country in terms of supervising people on supervision, right?

Joe Russo:  It’s growing rapidly. I hesitate to agree that it’s exploding. I think depending on who you talk to, certainly the vendors wouldn’t say it’s exploding, or their bottom lines would be exploding as well, but it is growing, it’s definitely growing. One of the key issues in this area and one that associations or government should take a look at is really getting a good sense for the market, how many offenders are on tracking. It’s very difficult to get that number. If you talk to experts from across the country the best that they can give you are just estimates based on previous surveys and formal surveys. So that’s something that I think that the field needs. But overall when you compare it to the number of people who’re on community supervision, it’s a very small percentage. So, again, there’re many ways to answer that question, whether it’s growing, but it could be fully utilized for sure.

Len Sipes:  But I’m thinking of two major research reports, one out of Florida and one out of California that indicated dramatically lower rates of recidivism, dramatically lower rates of technical violations, and reduced rates of arrest while under supervision. So satellite tracking research, GPS research seems to be promising.

Joe Russo:  Absolutely. As you say, both the Florida studies and the California studies show reductions in recidivism. I think that like any technology or like any program, things evolve and things are dynamic. And these two studies should not be considered the be-all and end-all. I think we still, there’s still a lot of room for us as an industry, as a field, to grow academically, to understand better how GPS can best be applied to achieve the outcomes that we desire. For example, I don’t believe either study took a look at how GPS performed with or without treatment services and we might learn that GPS providing lifestyle structure combined with treatment services where needed produces an even greater effect. So, yeah, the initial research has been very promising and I think that further research is needed and it can only probably be better applied in the future.

Len Sipes:  But a standard, as I understand it from most of the research done on community corrections, is that if there is a social services component, and I know that’s vague enough to drive a bus through, but if there’s treatment involved along with the supervision package, it’s been the treatment component of it that has been particularly successful in the past. So that’s a good point. Satellite tracking combined with treatment, depending upon the quality of the treatment and the intensity of the treatment, could have us real implications for keeping people out of further activity and keeping them out of the prison system.

Joe Russo:  Absolutely. And it touches on issues, for example, in terms of dosage, what’s the appropriate dosage of satellite tracking, do people need to be on satellite for extended lengths of time, is there a point of diminishing returns. The more research we have, the more we understand the dynamics, the better we can apply that technology and get better outcomes at a better cost.

Len Sipes:  Now, the interesting thing is that I’ve read a draft copy of your report in terms of the development of the technology standard, it was pretty doggone comprehensive. It was large; it was very detailed, very technical. So this is the first time that GPS and satellite tracking has been examined by the Corrections Technology Center of Excellence under the National Law Enforcement and Correction Technology Center’s system. I mean this is the first time it really has been systematically examined in terms of how people use satellite tracking, GPS tracking, and possibly what are the best uses of satellite and GPS tracking.

Joe Russo:  Yes. And we deal quite a bit on the issue in what we call the Selection and Application Guide, which is designed to help agencies interpret the technical standard and use the information in their programs across the country. So the technical standard would speak more towards performance metrics of how the technology should work in the Selection and Application Guide, as you allude to, address more of the potential applications, how is the technology used to address or to achieve the outcomes that are desired.

Len Sipes:  Is that available yet –?

Joe Russo:  Drafts are –

Len Sipes:  To the public?

Joe Russo:  Yeah. Drafts are available. But all of the documents that were produced, the standard Selection and Application Guide, were recently put out for public comment in January of this year and they’re all available.

Len Sipes:  All right, so they’re still available for public comment.

Joe Russo:  The public comment period has concluded.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Joe Russo:  But those drafts I believe are still on the web somewhere.

Len Sipes:  And how do they get them?

Joe Russo:  I would go to the NIJ website.

Len Sipes:  Okay. The National Institute –

Joe Russo:  National Institute of Justice.

Len Sipes:  National Institute of Justice Website. And we’ll have the link in our show notes regarding that. Okay. The efforts to promote information sharing, one, this is I think unique, because now for the first time we’ve had literally hundreds of organizations around the Unites States and beyond, from what I understand, talking to each other in terms of how they use satellite tracking, what the pitfalls are, what the difficulties are, what the remedies are. And I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that came out of your effort, the fact that now people are talking to each other.

Joe Russo:  Yeah. The best way to learn is from your colleagues and from your colleague’s experiences and whatever network can kind of occur on that level is just tremendous. There’s no sense reinventing the wheel. There’s much we can learn from our colleagues, as you mentioned, across the country, across the world. The National Institute of Justice has funded some specific projects to further information sharing of the data. That’s pretty interesting. They funded the development of information exchange packet documentation, which will allow for technically data from different systems to be integrated and shared so that it could be utilized more effectively.

Len Sipes:  Really?

Joe Russo:  Yeah. Yeah. And this, again, came from recommendations from our practitioner groups. And they recommended that this be developed to address two major issues, one is public safety, and the other is resource allocation. The public safety element comes into play and was illustrated very well on the recent case in Orange County, where you had two homeless sex offenders recently arrested for the murder of a prostitute, and they found out that they had committed four murders over the course of time. Now, both offenders were tracked via GPS, they were supervised by different agencies, one by the Federal US Probation, the other by California Parole.

Len Sipes:  Oh, I remember that case.

Joe Russo:  Yeah. And they were monitored by vendor equipment. But obviously living in the same area, they were both homeless, both kind of tented up together, and they had been associating for some time prior. Now, technically there’s no reason we can’t share that information, but this information currently resides in individual jurisdiction’s databases, individuals and their databases. And so part of the effort in developing this [PH 00:10:19] IETD, this information sharing mechanism, is to allow or facilitate better sharing of information. Again, it’s not the answer, but if we have a better way to share information then we can more readily make some of these connections and someone can say why are these two offenders associating for so long regardless –

Len Sipes:  Interesting.

Joe Russo:  Of who’s supervising them –

Len Sipes:  Now, also –

Joe Russo:  And regardless of what vendor.

Len Sipes:  This point of working on an automated analysis. If you talk to parole and probation people throughout the country they will tell you that GPS is really a tremendous amount of difficult work in terms of sifting through all of that data and analyzing all of that data. What does it mean? So working on an automated analysis system, what is that?

Joe Russo:  Well, basically as you say, the point is well taken. GPS is a tremendous tool, but it provides an overload of information for most agencies, too much information. And so there are techniques, there are tools that have been developed to help officers figure out what’s important and what’s not. One is the National Institute of Justice funded effort through the University of Oklahoma to develop a toolkit to help officers identify patterns of movement within their offender population that are of interest.

A lot of agencies across the country are required to review location points of their offenders on a daily basis. I mean literally point by point by point. Part of the goal of this study from Oklahoma was to develop a toolkit that would allow an officer to approve a pattern of behavior, so a daily record of location points, and then store that approval, and so the next time or the next day, if the offender has the same general pattern there’s no need to review those points. However, if there’s a divergence in that pattern then the officer is alerted to that divergence and they can look further into what divergence occurred, when did it occur, where did the offender go, and usually that is a starting point for gathering more information.

Len Sipes:  Really interesting, really interesting. The potential for protective analysis, that all falls into that in terms of what you just said.

Joe Russo:  It’s part and partial. I think that for some time agencies have been looking into thinking about big data and data mining to help them make better decisions over the years. And I believe your agency has used GIS systems to better understand how the issue of place has the relevance and a context in offender’s lives and where they work, where they live, are there services that are in those areas, can they get to services, is there public transportation for example. Use of predictive analysis has not yet reached the point of dynamic input. So we have all this wealth of information about GPS, we have a lot of offenders on GPS; we have a lot of location points not only in one jurisdiction, but across the nation; a lot offenders. So is there a way to mine all of the data to make some determinations, to create some hypotheses about is there a pattern of movement that correlates to success through revision, is there a pattern of movement or behavior that correlates to failure, are there dynamics factors that might tell you that a person is headed for failure or success.

Len Sipes:  Well, I think considering the amount of GPS being used currently and people interested in it and people looking at it, I think all of these are pretty interesting developments and really fascinating. Before we get to the break let’s start with advances in drug and alcohol testing. Fingerprint analysis?

Joe Russo:  Yeah. This is an interesting approach. It was developed by a company in the UK, and basically what they’re using is a portable way of measuring the secretions from fingerprints, so fingerprint oils, sweat that gets released through your fingerprint. They’ve developed technology that’s able to analyze those secretions for drug use. So it could provide a very noninvasive, easily used, low cost alternative to your analysis.

Len Sipes:  Huh, through fingerprints?

Joe Russo:  Through fingerprints. Yeah.

Len Sipes:  That’s really interesting. Remote mobile breath analysis?

Joe Russo:  Yeah. This an area that’s gained a lot of traction in recent years. There’re number of different products that have just been introduced to the market. And the idea was to kind of provide a less intrusive, less costly alternative to the secure transdermal monitoring bracelets that are existing now that are on offender’s legs. These are basically handheld units that an offender was prompted to breathe into and it takes an alcohol sample remotely. The technology confirms the identification of the offender either through photograph or facial recognition or breath print, depending on the technology, and it can note the offender’s location point via built-in GPS chips.

Len Sipes:  Now –

Joe Russo:  So –

Len Sipes:  Is this mobile breath analysis simply for alcohol or both drugs and alcohol?

Joe Russo:  Currently it’s just for alcohol.

Len Sipes:  Okay.

Joe Russo:  But –

Len Sipes:  And considering the alcohol problem that we have in terms of people under supervision that’s a fairly considerable advancement.

Joe Russo:  Oh, absolutely. Alcohol’s a major contributor to crime as you know. So it’s a very important tool.

Len Sipes:  Facial thermo-patterns, tell me about that, and we’ll go to the break.

Joe Russo:  Yeah. This is kind of interesting, as we go through our research in finding emerging technologies, this one crossed our desk. Basically it’s a development in alcohol testing that came from researchers in Greece. They’ve looked into thermal imaging as a way to determine whether a person is inebriated or not. So basically they’ve taken heat maps of people’s faces, people who’re sober and people who’re inebriated, and they’re able to tell through different algorithms what the characteristics of an inebriated person are. For example, they’ve determined that a person who is drunk, their nose tends to be much warmer than their forehead, and they can tell this through the thermal imaging.

Len Sipes:  Well, I can think of about a thousand bars that probably could use that equipment. Joe, let me quickly reintroduce you. Ladies and gentlemen, we were talking today Joe Russo. The show is on community corrections technology. Joe is with the University of Denver, he’s currently the Director of Corrections Technology Center of Excellence, a program within the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center System. Joe, go ahead and continue. And like I said, I can think of not a thousand, but probably 100 thousand bars that need facial thermo-patterns technology in that bar to tell whether or not they’re drunk or not.

Joe Russo:  Exactly. Yeah. I mean it’s a pretty innovative approach, and obviously if you can make a determination about intoxication from a distance, perhaps that provides greater advantages. And there’s no telling as this technology develops whether this can be deployed at a short distance or a longer distance to determine inebriation patterns among crowds. For example, after a sporting event it might help law enforcement agencies kind of focus potentially problematic groups. So really it has a lot of potential.

Len Sipes:  How would you employ it?

Joe Russo:  I didn’t see anything in the material that talked about how this was structured. I assume it’s a thermal imaging camera, but with a telescopic type lens maybe this could really work from a wide distance. Certainly in a community corrections application it would just be a camera in front of a person, you can get a reading very quickly. So, yeah, we’ll be keeping an eye on that technology.

Len Sipes:  Now, the Holy Grail here is, I would imagine, remote – because what we’re talking about in many ways is not only dealing with technology that tells either through the fingerprints or facial thermo-patterns, but remote devices, specifically on GPS and satellite tracking devices, that could tell whether or not a person is using alcohol or is inebriated. Does any of this apply to substance abuse yet as to whether or not people under supervision whether or not you can instantly tell they’re using drugs remotely?

Joe Russo:  Yeah. There have been some companies who have delved into that area. I don’t think that they’re mature as yet. But as you mentioned, that is the Holy Grail, that’s sort of the next horizon. We’ve kind of conquered that for alcohol use and substance use is kind of the next level. And really, beyond that, I know that the practitioner groups that we talk to are going beyond illegal drugs, but they’re interested in monitoring prescription drug use, both for abuse, using too much, or not using enough, because particularly with mental health clients if they’re not on their medication –

Len Sipes:  Oh, that’s a great point.

Joe Russo:  That causes a whole myriad of problems that could easily be avoided. So one of the kind of the futuristic thinking approaches that we’ve been looking at is how do we develop tools that remotely monitor prescription drug use, again, levels to make sure that they’re taking the appropriate amount and we can avoid unfortunate situations later.

Len Sipes:  In the same sort of conundrum that we currently have today in terms of synthetic drugs, where the combinations change from time to time, I mean it would be nice to have remote devices or new devices to deal with that issue as well. Because we could be testing for cocaine, we could be testing for marijuana, we could be testing for opiates, but testing for synthetic drugs, again, when the drugs constantly change, having some sort of new devices coming in and especially mobile devices, that would be an extraordinarily interesting development.

Joe Russo:  Yeah, exactly. I mean the industry, drug testing industry, is coming with tests as quickly as they can. Obviously new tests are very research development intensive so the costs of these tests tend to be very high. But when the target keeps moving, I don’t know the answer to that. How do you develop tests fast enough to detect these ever changing compounds?

Len Sipes:  All right, I find this interesting. Leveraging video teleconferencing, people under supervision reporting in via teleconference and also the treatment and service delivery via teleconference, talk to me about that.

Joe Russo:  Yeah. We’ve seen this more and more in rural or remote settings. Agencies are exploring ways to more efficiently and effectively connect with their clients. There’re many parts of the country where clients live miles and miles away from probation offices, and this obviously becomes a very resource-intensive proposition for officers to spend hours of time traveling to see one client. Compounding that, if they live in remote areas, there’re typically no services available for them to capitalize on. So agencies across the country are looking at video teleconferencing services to try and bridge this gap. There’s one agency in rural Kansas that serves a six county area, and rather than driving miles and miles every day, they’re trying to use Skype to connect with their clients and do reporting in that way.

Len Sipes:  So we’re talking about, in terms of video, we’re talking about using their Smartphones, using their tablets?

Joe Russo:  Yeah. Tablets, home computers, as long as they have internet connectivity then they can connect with their probation officer via Skype or another service.

Len Sipes:  And the same questions that that probation or parole agent would ask the person directly when they see them could be asked in terms of the provision of treatment and service delivery. I mean in terms of our own mental health caseload one of the principle questions we ask is, “Are you taking your medications? Show me your medications. Are you taking them every day? Are you taking them as prescribed?” So I would imagine that would enter into it.

Joe Russo:  Yeah. You can go through very much the same protocol that you would in an in person interview. I would imagine the only thing that might be lacking is that direct in person kind of look for effect and then things that just would not translate very well via video. But for the most part the interview protocol would remain the same.

Len Sipes:  So, but the treatment part of it, are we talking about providing treatment services via teleconference?

Joe Russo:  Well, we’ve learned that Nebraska Judicial Services is using in exactly. Again, they have a very remote rural section of their state, and rather than having offenders, again, drive miles to a central location to get services, they’ve set up video conferencing systems in the county sheriff’s departments, and offenders can just go to their local sheriff department and there’s a video set for them to take –

Len Sipes:  Ah.

Joe Russo:  [OVERLAY] classes, parenting, cognitive skill therapy, and –

Len Sipes:  Oh, that’s exciting.

Joe Russo:  Yeah. Yeah. So it’s interactive and it’s a very innovative approach to a difficult problem.

Len Sipes:  And I had a recent discussion this weekend with somebody who is, and I shouldn’t identify the group at this stage of the game because they’re just developing it, but they’re talking about remote classes for correctional institutions, so all of this is really exciting. The last two issues in terms of the program, officer safety developments and a social media issue paper that was developed with the American Probation and Parole Association. Tell me about those.

Joe Russo:  Yes. Officer safety, we’ve come across two interesting items. One is the use of GPS technology for lone workers. These are workers who are out in remote settings by themselves and where safety could become an issue. These systems are deployed in industry across the spectrum. Minnesota Department of Corrections has recently explored using this for their parole agents who work out in the field by themselves. These are typically GPS tracking devices as you would think of them on an offender, but the officer carries them, they have a man-down function, a [PH 00:24:25] duress alert, where the officer can communicate back with a central monitoring station, and the officer is tracked and located throughout their travels out there in the wild. Communications are achieved either through cellular, the network, if that’s not available the technology can communicate via satellite communication so that the officer is never truly alone out there.

Len Sipes:  But that’s fascinating because it could apply to urban environments as well.

Joe Russo:  Any environment, exactly, particularly where officers are working by themselves it’s a critical concern.

Len Sipes:  And I really like the fact that it has a man-down concept to it so if a person goes into a prone position there is an immediate alert sent to a central monitoring station.

Joe Russo:  Exactly. The other neat officer safety tool that we came across, and this might be a little futuristic, but we’ve heard a presentation from researchers at MIT who developed clothing that can be used as a personal protective device. Basically they embed electronics into a jacket or outer garment that conducts electricity and energy. So the wearer is insulated, but if they activate their jacket, for example, and an aggressor touches them, they receive a shock.

Len Sipes:  Amazing.

Joe Russo:  And the idea is to provide the officer enough space and time –

Len Sipes:  Right.

Joe Russo:  To get out of a hand to hand combat type situation. So, again, for people working in the field alone, officers who don’t carry firearms, this might be an interesting to consider in the future.

Len Sipes:  Final issue – and we only have a couple minutes left – social media. Again, you’re working on in a paper with the American Probation and Parole Association about social media use. I see dozens of examples almost daily of people not just under supervision, but criminals or people of interest, going out and sitting in front of a, doing a YouTube video sitting in front of a stash of drugs and guns and talking about their exploits. So this is becoming rather common.

Joe Russo:  There’s no doubt. Social media is well established as a part of our lives in this day and age, whether we like it or not, particularly with the younger generation. So many of our offenders have this virtual presence. They maintain presence on social media. And to some extent it’s irresponsible for community corrections agencies not to explore and look at how offenders are using social media because it is such an ingrained part of life. So this issue paper that we’re developing is designed to help agencies understand what social media is, why it’s important, what offenders are doing online, again, why it’s important to monitor that activity, and some issues that they need to consider as they develop a policy about how their officers should use social media.

There are some pitfalls about social media privacy issues, how to authenticate information that they may obtain via Facebook pages, for example, of their offenders, whether to do covert investigations, for example, where the officer might pretend to be someone else, establish a false identity. All of these are issues that agencies need to consider strongly, compare them to their missions and their goals, and really develop policies so that when officers do engage in this activity it’s in direct alignment with the agency’s mission.

Len Sipes:  We were talking before the program about being able to geocode, or all photos, if you GPS enabled on your phone or tablet, evidently the photos are geocoded. So we can figure not only what he was doing, because he’s making a YouTube video, and I mean there’re all sorts of other examples, but YouTube certainly does come to mind, but also figuring out exactly where he is.

Joe Russo:  Exactly. Yeah. That’s a little known feature, and if you use a digital camera with location systems enabled you could very well be giving up your location, which of course works very well in the favor of probation and parole officers who’re trying to determine if their offender is outside of jurisdiction.

Len Sipes:  In the final 30 seconds or so. The bottom line behind all of the technology that we talked about today, Joe, is to ensure compliant behavior; is to keep people out of the prison system; is to prompt their good behavior, reduce technical violations; reduce rearrest, and reduce return to prison. So this has a fiscal note to it that could be very favorable to state and local agencies and it has research behind it that in essence says that people when they’re monitored in these ways are far more compliant and they are just doing much better on parole and probation supervision, correct or incorrect?

Joe Russo:  Exactly. It’s all about outcomes. Technology is a tool and we have to be careful not to overuse it and over-supervise low-risk offenders. Ideally, we’re using the appropriate level of technology to supervise offenders and dedicate more officer’s valuable time on those high-risk cases that demand that interpersonal connection.

Len Sipes:  And I’m really glad you brought that up, because the real focus of most of this would be the high-risk offender.

Joe Russo:  Exactly, exactly. It’s very easy to fall into a trap of applying technology across the board, but we have to really be more intelligent about how to use our limited resources.

Len Sipes:  Well, Joe, as always, I really do appreciate you coming onto the show today. And ladies and gentlemen, we did show with Joe Russo on community corrections technology. I always find it fascinating. We did discuss satellite tracking and alcohol and drug testing and teleconferencing and social media and lots of other things. Joe is with the University of Denver and currently serves as the Director of Corrections Technology Center of Excellence, a program within the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center System. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments, we even your criticisms, and please have yourselves a very pleasant day.

[Audio Ends]

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