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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."
When it was called Minority Report
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
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...
How much did it cost them to predict that crime would happen in drug-infested poor neighborhoods?
Sure, the study showed a little more than that, but you have to question the usefulness.
Mr. Smith, you will commit a murder tomorrow morning at 2:34 PM. You will murder your wife. We are taking you into our custody now.
But what about...
Mr. Smith, you will break free from our custody tomorrow and attack a security guard in the process. Thus, we are taking you into our custody now.
I like paradoxes, but not when they're amber.
I like paradoxes, even though my name's not Bamber.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
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.
Does this sound to anyone else like the beginning of psychohistory?
It's a neat idea, but it seems like the complex and chaotic nature of the neighborhood would preclude anyone from being able to draw any substantive conclusion. I mean, if we can't get the weather right within 80% more than 12 hours in advance, we should we be able to predict the behavior of humans, even in large groups?
Easy. The top four, at least:
1. Speeding
2. Rolling stops
3. Sodomy
4. Jaywalking
They're going to have to apply some scoring other than frequency to make this useful.
So, if I want to stage a robbery, now I should find out where the least likely spots are for said robbery, demographically (do they have to publicize the specific information they gather? Civil liberties advocates would probably push it)--and then commit crime where they expect it least. Such a system, if acted upon in the manner suggested, would allow an informed criminal (or gang of criminals!) to act with even less resistance than before. That's the major flaw with demographic information, of course; it only gives averages and likely outcomes. But "they" (local police forces who use this information) will have to be careful in how they use it, because an overreliance on statistics means that the outlier criminal could take away someone's life or property with little chance of being caught.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
And just think, as criminals get more sophisticated, the models will begin to fail, and it's back to "zone coverage".
I can imagine this getting into macrocycles as demand pushes more technology, which is then picked up on and counteracted by criminals "in the know".
Right now, we're lucky that most criminals are not uber-hackers who can break into police databases to get datasets to run through the models they leeched off University FTP sites.
But that's not to say that it couldn't be done by a third part. Contractors who can't find work might start looking for a quick buck...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Isn't that right, Mr. Anderton?
"Heisenburglary"
Does that mean if you are observing the crime, then you are committing it yourself?
That word you coined does sound like something involving a McDonald's mascot.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I predict that in the next few moments, an incident of copyright infringement will occur.
*waits*
*click*
*clickyclick*
Looks like I was right.
I also predict that a few marijuana-related laws will be broken this evening.
Damn, I'm GOOD!
we can't get the weather right within 80% more than 12 hours in advance
This is true, because as you point out weather is a chaotic system. But nevertheless, we can predict certain global outcomes like the annual rainfall in Sweden or the average summer temperature in LA with quite good accuracy.
Similarly, we will probably never be able get the number of crimes within the next 12 hours right within 80%. But the number of crimes within the next month is another matter.
And this can be quite useful in considering different social policies or sending patrol cars to the right places.
Tor
Preliminary data reveals that carjackings correlate to the number of copies of GTA that have been sold in the immediate area. From now on, your license will automatically be suspended when you buy GTA.
Officials are also considering legislation to classify "The Sims" as an addictive substance.
Ron Paul 2012
I don't know about that.
Lots of variables in weather.
Humans - fear, greed, envy and lust about sums it up
The Singularity is closer than you think
Quant
True. Here in the U.S., the government doesn't publish jurisdictional correlations between crime victimization rates and economic numbers like residential and commercial real estate values, and total household employment (nonfarm and farm, payroll and self-employment.) Between those three values, there are three correlations, and six possible arrows of causation. Some of the data are recorded by census tract, and some are recorded by precinct. It should be easy to convert such measures to counties, but it is not always easy.
However, it seems that many officials do have an intuitive sense that when the crime rate goes up, property values go down, and when jobs are created, then property values go up and crime goes down. Therefore, creating jobs with education is nearly universally superior to creating jobs with war (e.g., "security" jobs != job security.) There are a lot of officials who still don't understand that, many of whom are corrupt, but most of whom are simply ignorant.
It would help if they would stop using the "unemployment rate" when they would be better off with the "job creation rate." Nobody knows what the optimal unemployment rate is, but everyone wants the number of employed people to increase, primarily because that's the only way we can pay for all the unemployable people.
It would also help if they would stop using "flat tax" when they mean "progressive taxation." Keeping the high tax brackets from allowing the middle class to shrink is perhaps the most important of all, since class warfare is so evil.
Another thing that would help would be to stop laying off teachers. Anyone who wants a military much larger than they think it really should be, should really look again at the lines of causation.
Nobody ever said life would be a cakewalk. However, with excellent math there will always be a way.
Best wishes.