Spanish algorithm leaves domestic violence victims out in the cold: For the past 15 years, Spain has been using an algorithmic system called VioGén to help the police assess the risk women face when they file complaints of abuse. But the system has severe flaws that lead to women’s risk being ranked too low and without the appropriate response from the authorities, according to a new report by Eticas Consulting, an algorithmic auditing company, and the Ana Bella Foundation, an organization campaigning against gender violence.
Meet VioGén: Launched in 2007, the system was created by the Spanish Ministry of Interior. The “Integral Monitoring System in Cases of Gender Violence” (the VioGén System) is a web application designed to help authorities coordinate actions to protect women and their children from gender violence. The idea was to standardize a set of questions that the authorities ask women when they make an official complaint in an effort to treat them fairly and offer better treatment.
How it works: VioGén uses classical statistical models to perform a risk evaluation and offers women a risk score, which determines how much help they will receive.
Here’s where it goes all wrong: “We could see in the media that every so often you’ll get a woman that was killed and their VioGén risk had been ranked low,” said Gemma Galdon-Clavell, Eticas Consulting’s CEO. Her audit found that in 2021, only 1 out of 7 women who reached out to the police for protection received help, and only a small minority of women received a risk score of “medium” or higher, which would qualify them for police protection. “If you don’t have children, you may get a lower risk score, which is also concerning,” Galdon-Clavell added.
A high bar: The proportion of women who report their partners for abuse is likely only the tip of the iceberg of all domestic abuse and intimate partner violence cases. Women risk a lot by going to the authorities, and often do so in situations of extreme duress. “I was trembling, I couldn’t find the words to explain years of abuse, mockery, scorn and contempt from him, it wasn’t easy and the police officer who took my statement was not trained to deal with a person who had suffered gender violence,” one women who participated in Eticas’s audit said.
The VioGén questionnaire was a baffling experience. “I was totally lost in these questionnaires between nerves and crying. There was no one with me to explain the questionnaires. The policeman gave me the paper and left me alone and every now and then he came to pressure me to finish quickly,” the woman said
‘Nightmare’ scenario: “It’s like a bad dream. A nightmare. And to this day I don’t remember those questions, I just remember that I felt very bad and unprotected. I didn’t even know there was a score,” another woman who participated in the audit said.
Humans not in the loop: Etica’s audit found that VioGén is not very transparent and has very little human oversight or accountability. In 95 percent of cases, police officers stuck with the risk score the system offered.
Machine-learning red flag: The ministry has said it is considering introducing machine learning to VioGén. This is a big red flag to Galdon-Clavell. “It’s quite clear that human oversight is not working,” she said. Using machine-learning would lead to the discrimination patterns to be “made even worse without any kind of oversight,” she added.
Spain’s interior ministry responds: The risk assessment system “is based on the study of 600,000 real cases and has been subject to a constant and permanent process of evaluation and improvement since 2007, with the collaboration of universities and study centers of recognized academic prestige,” a spokesperson for the Spanish interior ministry said. The Eticas report “lacks academic rigor by basing its study and its conclusions on an insignificant statistical universe of only 31 interviews compared to the more than five million risk assessments carried out since 2007,” they continued.
How to fix the system: Involving women in the process and explaining how the system works would be a good start. Women who used the system told Decoded that they would have liked support from a specialist in gender violence, psychologists or doctors. “Give security to the victim. Give empathy. Don’t judge. Be kind and supportive,” a second woman said. Read more from me here.