February 9th - This week on the Justice Beat –Women: "without us the world stops", and artificial intelligence.
Without us the world stops
1. Spain "ground to a halt" as women across the country went on strike yesterday to mark International Women’s Day, reports the Telegraph. 5.3 million women walked out. Using the slogan "without us the world stops", the strike called for an end to unequal pay, awareness of "devalued domestic labour" and more action against gender-based violence.
2. A man in Belgium has been convicted of sexism – a legal first after a new law was introduced in the country, reports the The Indy. “It was a good case to test this law," said the prosecutor's spokesman, "a concrete and very clear case, with many witnesses. This is obviously not always the case.”
3. Will the UK follow suit? Labour MP Melanie Olman has called for catcalling and sexist abuse in public to be made hate crimes, reports the Guardian. Specifically, it would require adding "misogyny" to the current 5 strands of hate crime.
Artificial Intelligence
4. What's the balance of liability between man and machines when it comes to self-driving cars? That’s one of the many questions to be examined in a new government review of the law before self-driving cars arrive on our roads, reports the Guardian. Philip Hammond has promised they’ll be here by 2021 – and the government is both investing in the tech but also trying to make sure the law keeps up.
5. Police in Durham have been trialling an AI algorithm to make custody decisions, but it could be discriminating against people from poorer areas, Wired reports. The system uses data such as age, gender and postcode to rate how likely someone is to reoffend. It has been criticised for reinforcing existing biases, and a review of its operation also found large discrepancies between human predictions and those made by the system.
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This week on CrowdJustice, Rights of Women are crowdfunding for their legal advice service, the Throat Cancer Foundation are fighting for boys to be vaccinated against HPV, Brockwell residents campaign against private events in their local park, the Gulf Centre for human rights are challenging the weakening of the ministerial code and parents in Surrey fight against cuts to special needs services.
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