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

I liked this better

[recursiv]

When it was called Minority Report

Re:I liked this better

[ichimunki]

They aren't going to be able to stop crimes before they happen, because that's impossible (unless you count mitigating the factors that cause crime, like poverty or mental illness). If you stop it before it happens, then it hasn't happened.

The only concern I have about this is that it will heighten the notions of where to send police in the first place. In Minneapolis we have a system called CODEFOR that is used to help police track crime and prioritize resources, but it's based (I believe) on reported crime. That's quite different than using statistical measures like arrest rates to project crime rates and send police into an area based on that. One has to be very careful, since using the results of this to direct limited police resources could influence the numbers that go into the model in the first place (feedback looping).

Luckily, the people the article talks about were using a wide variety of inputs (not just police or crime-related) to what are likely a host of regression analyses.

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.

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...

computer predicts heinous crimes w/100% certainty:

[presearch]

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

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.

Potential for abuse

[AEton]

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.

Re:Has anybody read Asimov's Foundation trilogy?

[L. VeGas]

Has anybody read Asimov's Foundation trilogy?

I thought I felt a breeze. It must have the collective wind from 500,000 slashdotters raising their hands at the same time.