Predictive Policing

[davidbfpo]

The "think tank" Policy Exchange, who have considerable impact on UK government policies, have a seminar next week on 'Pre-Crime and Predictive Policing'.

From the summary:

Predicting where offences will occur and deploying police before crime happens has been an inexact science until recently, but that may soon change. Two pilots of the experimental ‘predictive policing’ method are underway in California and this new approach could have important lessons for UK policing in how forces deploy their resources to prevent crime....

The most robust predictive policing pilot, in Los Angeles, has just begun and shows some promising early results. The lead officer for the LAPD pilot, and a pioneer of predictive policing, Sean Malinowski, will be a speaker alongside George Tita, an expert on predictive models, from the University of California at Irvine.

Link:http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/eve...ent.cgi?id=405

(Added later in 2016) Link to video of the event:http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/mod...ctive-policing

[davidbfpo]

A lengthy article in The Guardian, sub-titled:

Smart technology and the sort of big data available to social networking sites are helping police target crime before it happens. But is this ethical?

He starts with:

The police have a very bright future ahead of them – and not just because they can now look up potential suspects on Google. As they embrace the latest technologies, their work is bound to become easier and more effective, raising thorny questions about privacy, civil liberties, and due process.

Link no longer works due to copyright and a search on Evgeny Morozov, the author's blog failed.

The author correctly draws attention to the leviathans of public use IT, for example Facebook & Amazon and asks who reviews their algorithms, for their ethical basis and effectiveness.

Given the clear failure to win the so called 'war on drugs', which has had massive funding and much hi-tech - why would this predictive policing be effective?

[Sergeant T]

The Economist weighs in on the topic.

Predicting and forestalling crime does not solve its root causes. Positioning police in hotspots discourages opportunistic wrongdoing, but may encourage other criminals to move to less likely areas. And while data-crunching may make it easier to identify high-risk offenders—about half of American states use some form of statistical analysis to decide when to parole prisoners—there is little that it can do to change their motivation.

I get a little queasy when we start handing decision making over to algorithms. As we used to say, you can't quantify the bad things that don't happen.

[davidbfpo]

Found this JHU author's paper whilst looking for something else, on a quick skim read it is a useful summary, but I still have my doubts over this approach.

Link:

http://www.businessofgovernment.org/...20Policing.pdf

[davidbfpo]

The (US) NIJ has commissioned a RAND study and the linked piece quickly summarises the position, form a critical viewpoint:http://nextcity.org/daily/entry/predictive-policing-crime-stats-data-measure

[davidbfpo]

A short NYT article reviews the situation, with a focus on Kansas City, but these two paragraphs struck me - is this option really working?

The Memphis police force, a pioneer in predictive policing, has worked with the University of Memphis for about a decade to forecast crime by noting time and location of episodes and information about victims. Officers then flood those areas with marked and undercover police cars, and also increase traffic stops, the department said.

But violent crime has proved stubborn in Memphis, and the city continues to be one of the most dangerous places in the nation, according to F.B.I. data.

Link:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/us...t-crimes.html?

[davidbfpo]

A short article and no links that explain more alas:

Police departments in many American cities are using high-tech databases to determine how dangerous individuals might be when officers arrive at a crime scene.The systems take into account criminal history, social media profiles, property records and other factors to produce a “threat score”. Before reporting to a crime scene, police can use the databases to retrieve scores on those inside.

Link:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...dia-posts.html