Crime Prediction

pipingguy writes "More than a decade of extensive crime data collection matched with new technology may soon allow police to predict to a surprising degree of accuracy the number and type of crimes that will occur in a given neighborhood one month in advance."

Comments

And yet will stop none.

[BoomerSooner]

Worthless if it doesn't help stop any.

You've got to look at the cause not the effect to make a change. Minority Report just won't work. Normally you can guess these stats based on the demographics of the area as well.

Live in the country? Then you're more likely to get broken into.
Live in Compton? You're more likely to get shot in a drive-by.
Live next to Barbara Streisand? You're more likely to get sued.

The list goes on...

Not minority report

[moc.tfosorcimgllib]

Before everyone goes on a rant about how this is Minority Report or how it's useless to suggest crime happens in poor neighborhoods (duh!) remember what this tool will most likely be used for: placing officers where they will do the most good.
It isn't a presumption of guilt, or arrest before a crime is attempted (minority report). This will be used to determine how many beat officers are needed to reduce crime in an area and if they are in fact reducing the amount of crime.


Of course you can use statistics to prove anything, 75% of everyone knows that.

Re:I liked this better

[4of12]

The problem is not so much profiling as it is stopping short of full intelligent analysis of the profiling data.

Coming to the conclusion that "black skin causes criminals" is as short sighted as coming to the conclusion that "nicotine stains between the fingers causes lung cancer".

There are deeper root causes that people don't want to examine because it could upset their convenient view of the world and/or cost them time and money to solve properly.

Unfortunately, it's politically convenient to sit patly on the shallow analysis and to offer similarly shallow solutions, like the heavy-handed approach you mention.

It's the solution of bureaucracy: since 1% of the people do wrong, we'll impose an onerous burden on ten times as many people, and probably only be 30% successfully in stopping the 1% bad element.