Predictive Policing - An Algorithm to Predict Crime?

[maiforpeace]

Santa Cruz, the major city near where I live has implemented this program. Salinas, a nearby town with lots of gang activity is next.

Thoughts? Comments?

Sending the Police Before There’s a Crime

[Clinton Huxley]

The police here are doing something similar prior to the Olympics. Innocent until predicted guilty.

[Atheist-Lite]

A runaway success until the crooks realise how all the police are following a 'a bit of a pattern' and use their unpredictable human cunning to visit the gaps in enforcement?

[Svartalf]

Looks like this is a grandly open gate for abuse and mistakes... statistics are fine and dandy, but by nature not absolutely reliable... and as crumple says, if criminals catch on to the police following their patterns, they will break them, and if they catch onto the police's patterns, they'll use that against the heat too... in a worst case scenario, it might get innocents killed or framed.... prosecutors are very good at framing innocents on circumstantial coincidences when they want to look tough.

[klr]

Edging dangerously close to Minority Report territory?

[Mysturji]

It'll never catch on, or if it does it'll never be as effective as hoped, because most crime happens in poor areas, which besides being More Dangerous Places To Be, contain a distinct lack of rich people, who will kick up a stink when the police fail to shoot a suspicious-looking poor ethnic person for making their lovely neighbourhood look untidy.

Either that, or it will be a resounding success when the police apprehend all the suspicious-looking poor ethnic people in their homes and cart them off to the showers & ovens.

Either that, or the poor people will revolt and chaos will reign for a thousand years, and the instigators of this program will have no-one to blame but themselves... and the poor.

[Pappa]

Assuming it does what it says on the tin I think it's a great idea. If it has a low rate of false positives and high rate of hits it'll save a lot of time and money. It's just giving police info on the best places to look, not invasive or unethical at all.

[Atheist-Lite]

Assuming it does what it says on the tin I think it's a great idea. If it has a low rate of false positives and high rate of hits it'll save a lot of time and money. It's just giving police info on the best places to look, not invasive or unethical at all.

Wouldn't want them to rely on and develop their own heuristics, and start to think for themselves.

[FBM]

Sounds like a smart idea to me, unless they start arresting people just for peeking into cars, without having done anything to be arrested for. Not sure how they were able to legally take those two women in the story into custody just for that, then run a background check on them after they were in custody. I don't want to be subject to being taken into custody just for looking suspicious in an area where the computer says a crime is likely to occur.

[Atheist-Lite]

If the street wise crooks know where all the cops are gonna be the smarter ones will take advantage of that. These are closely coupled actors, cops'n'robbers - the feedbacks will interact and ruin any predictive capacity after a while is my intuition. Especially if a bent copper starts to leak predictions...or the prog appears on the interweb?

[Tyrannical]

Holiday weekends are popular times for shootings and other hijinks, just like heavy rain or snow deters crime. Less crime in the winter when it is cold, but the first few warm nights...

[Warren Dew]

Santa Cruz, the major city near where I live has implemented this program. Salinas, a nearby town with lots of gang activity is next.

Thoughts? Comments?

Sending the Police Before There’s a Crime

As long as they are only making predictions about where crimes will occur, and only arrest people for actual criminal violations as these two people had and not just for suspicious activity, I'm for it.

My problem is when they start trying to predict which individuals will commit crimes and take them into custody preemptively.

[Tyrannical]

Anyone else wonder if the White girl in handcuffs was just a stock photo or directly related to the story? Even the Daily Mail is guilty of that all the time.

[Atheist-Lite]

Becoming dependant on technology for this very human task of outsmarting other humans. A recipe for disaster.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmOe28Ih ... re=related[/youtube]

[Tyrannical]

Becoming dependant on technology for this very human task of outsmarting other humans. A recipe for disaster.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmOe28Ih ... re=related[/youtube]

There was a Green Arrow comic graphic novel around 25 years ago that made mention of an ethnocentric man made communicable disease. That would probably be child's play today if the effort was put towards it. So watch out for the Chinese