Book Review: Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN: 9781250074317, 2018, 288 pages, $26.99.

    In Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, Virginia Eubanks uses three case studies to show how privatization, automation, and outsourcing radically alter social service delivery in the United States. The book introduces readers to social workers and clients in Indiana; Los Angeles; and Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where recent efforts to “streamline” services for those in need have failed to deliver on the promises touted by proponents of increased automation. The book serves as a warning to social workers and administrators who may feel pressured by local community leaders to incorporate more “high-tech” programs into their practices. Although these technological changes promise savings, as evidenced by the case studies in the book, they often serve to enhance inequality and promote greater social divisions.

    Eubanks introduces readers to the harm of automation by focusing on social services in the state of Indiana. In the early 2000s, Indiana led the way in automating social services when it privatized its system for determining who is eligible for benefits. No longer would public employees and professional social workers determine benefit eligibility. Instead, a computer program, created by IBM and administered by a private corporation, would take an applicant’s information and provide an instant determination of benefits. Eubanks chronicles a few of the thousands of people who were denied benefits unjustly because of an errant click of a computer mouse or wrong button pressed when responding to the automated interface. Health, food security, and desperately needed cash assistance were all denied because of simple human and technological error.

    In both Los Angeles and Allegheny County, PA, private corporations were called in to help local social service authorities become better at “predicting” who will need services. In Los Angeles, homeless services are now determined by a computer program that ranks an individual’s needs. A person living on the street can meet with a caseworker, who needs no specialized training outside of how to navigate the intake software, and within a few minutes can receive a determination of how “in need” they are. In Allegheny County, a similar program is used to determine how “at risk” a child is of being abused and how likely the child may need intervention from child protective services. From these stories, a picture emerges of localities using these technologies without much thought toward how it will affect members of the community.

    Technology is not portrayed as an inherently “bad thing.” Where Eubanks succeeds is in showing how technology can become a fetish of service delivery and improvement. It’s evident that social workers and administrators, who want to embrace technology while also saving money, are the most susceptible to the type of thinking that allows services to become automated.

    Eubanks provides a warning to our profession. Embracing technology without considering how it will impact our already high levels of inequality is a recipe for disaster. As social workers, we need to ensure that all technology brought into our work with clients promotes social justice and upholds our profession’s values.

Reviewed by David Hornung, PhD, LMSW, Assistant Professor of Social Work, MSW Program, CUNY York College.