Dick Berk ’64 speaks on “AI, Criminal Justice,

and the Land of the Free”

September 3, 2026

Classmates and friends:

The next Class of 1964 Zoom event will occur on Thursday, October 15, 2026, from 4:00pm - 5:30pm eastern time. The topic will be the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the criminal justice system. The speaker will be our classmate Dick Berk ’64, Emeritus Professor of Criminology and Statistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Tom Barnard ’64 will be the moderator. Register for the event here.

Dick received his Ph.D in Sociology from Johns Hopkins in 1970. He first used AI in criminal-justice research when at UCLA in the 1980s, where he was awarded the title of Distinguished Professor of Statistics. His applied work in criminal justice was undertaken for the California Department of Corrections and the Los Angeles Police Department. He routinely consulted for the U.S. Sentencing Commission, the Federal Department of Corrections, and state-level criminal justice agencies around the country.

In 2006, he was hired by the University of Pennsylvania for a position in the Department of Criminology and the Department of Statistics. He continued to develop AI procedures for criminal-justice agencies including writing the code for risk assessment tools used by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, the Pennsylvania Parole Board, and the Philadelphia Department of Probation and Parole. Dick retired from Penn in 2023 but his work on AI procedures and criminal-justice applications continued apace. In 2025, he served on the advisory committee for the Pennsylvania State Legislature on the future of AI in the Commonwealth.

Dick’s talk will include illustrations from real criminal-justice applications such as facial recognition to intimidate protesters, AI large-language models (LLMs) summarizing evidence or providing testimony, offender risk assessments to assist or replace human decisions in charging, sentencing, and parole supervision, and “embodied” AI in robotic police dogs and robotic police officers.

Registration for the event is required. Classmate spouses and partners are welcome to attend. Register for the event by clicking on the following link:

Register by clicking here

Once registered, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to the Zoom meeting. That link will be unique to you. On the day before the event you’ll be sent the link again as a reminder.

Please mark your calendars, and don't forget to register!

Cheers,

Joe Wishcamper
Event Organizer