Slashdot Mirror
Law Enforcement Wants To Try 'Predictive Policing'
Harperdog with this excerpt from a story about using statistics to fight crime:
"It’s great when cops catch criminals after they've done their dirty work. But what if police could stop a crime before it was even committed? Though that may sound like a fantasy straight from a Philip K. Dick novel, it's a goal police departments from Los Angeles to Memphis are actively pursuing with help from the Department of Justice and a handful of cutting-edge academics. It's called 'predictive policing.' The idea: Although no one can foresee individual crimes, it is possible to forecast patterns of where and when homes are likely to be burgled or cars stolen by analyzing truckloads of past crime reports and other data with sophisticated computer algorithms. 'We know where crime has occurred in the last month, but that doesn't mean it'll be there next month,' Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Sean Malinowski says. 'The only way for us to continue to have crime reduction is to start anticipating where crime is going to occur.'"
Fuck these people and the horses they rode in on.
Are they spending a lot of money for a fancy computer system that will tell them to watch out for crime in the crime ridden part of town?
I read the internet for the articles.
minority report brigade creation to be announced soon
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
"Sorry, sir, but we've determined that you're likely to commit a crime soon. Please come with us. Thank you for your cooperation."
Arresting someone before a crime is committed is a bad idea. Arresting someone in the process of committing a crime is also okay. What they are talking about here, it seems, is predicting crime like predicting the weather and manning the areas most likely to have precipitation.
Alternatively, if you live in a bad neighborhood, just keep a bunch of donuts on-hand. They can smell it!
first futurama and now slashdot. I think my daily dose of minority report has been satisfied
I've always wanted to know how to predict the future myself. So far, it's been a huge failure for me. I've bought all these crystal balls, hired some company rhyming with schmalantir... maybe they can find the right mix. After they do, imma get so rich in the stock market! Booyah!
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Sounds like the new term for "Racial Profiling"...
Profiling.... just not with people and in today's world god forbid a cop use that term. This is nothing new.
I always knew that whole presumption of innocence thing was a waste of time.
Break out the Precogs! Everyone is suspect!
...except with Watson the supercomputer instead of Samantha Morton. Just remember that when he says "Toronto" it means he doesn't know the answer.
"The only way for us to continue to have crime reduction is to start anticipating where crime is going to occur."
Maybe not having a poverty rate of over 16% would be a way?
Policing the Dunkin' Donuts isn't going to prevent many crimes. Policing areas where crimes occur will prevent crimes, or at least force the criminals to expend energy going elsewhere. This is called "the police being smart and doing their jobs" and it's nothing like Minority Report.
This was the basis of the thought crimes in "1984". Of course, since Blago was convicted of pretty much the same thing...
or are laid off, you can expect crime to rise. Duh!
That is why it's so important to have a strong economy. I don't think you need predictive software to figure out that people have to eat.
This is ultimately just a waste of money on the part of Law Enforcement and that money could better be spent actually creating a job or on actually improving investigation techniques and training. Police work solves crime, and most of the crime that has to be given the highest priority is violent crime.
How would this software predict a domestic violence incident, or a murder? Until it can predict violent crime it's useless.
"He looks foreign."
"Get him."
I believe IBM is one of the bigger players in this market, if not the biggest. http://www.ibm.com/ibm100/us/en/icons/crimefighting/ To me, this is just another way that our tax dollars are being funneled into corporate bank accounts.
giggity
I find the most compelling book is omitting the most compelling story of all. Carnivore. All I hear is "the bad guys are doing it worse, we have to do it better to keep them out." And "there is no security, so we have to build it into the network " because if we build the security, we'll own the back door. The internet has security for when you want to use it. The internet has no security when you don't want it. The problem is that the government has gotten used to having all of our lives under scrutiny in the name of security. Privacy as we know is eroding over the amorphous war on terror. The war that was started by those now fighting when they used those exact tactics in Vietnam. The world is simply emulating the US albeit in an earlier stage of evolution. Instead of attempting to undermine their development, developing them as equal partners that didn't have to fear the US might be a goal worth exploring. But human beings are less altruistic than their primate cousins. I'm sure we'd still screw this up if we tried it. I think we'll just have to wait for the pendulum to swing back. Until then, Generation Y and Z are going to be stupid enough to think that the government can protect them when they won't do it for themselves.
Sounds like something Scalia would support
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
My hous gets robbed,,,,,,,i contact my insurance,,,,,,get all new stuff,,,,,,get robbed again :)
so,,,,,,,easy you see
Let's say there is a high correlation between wives who take out life insurance policies on their husbands, and murder, should the software instruct the police to arrest these women or just investigate them?
http://www.torontoestatemonitor.com/estate-litigation/man-who-killed-wife-is-denied-her-life-insurance/
There are two uses for this, identifying where the next target of an uncaught multiple offender is likely to be, and identifying areas where high crime may become a problem in the future. The first is already applied to things like murder. For the second it is more about allocating resources to catch opportunists in places which are both attractive and vulnerable before they become a problem, not predicting who will commit.
So ... they've figured out they should patrol potential hot spots?
"Oh, turns out you don't possess the materials to commit the crime we determined you were likely to commit. The TSA apologizes for any inconvenience. Please enjoy your flight."
I predict a few crimes will be committed in the police department.
I have worked as a programmer in law enforcement, and we were doing this 15 years ago, based on some of the things that NYPD had implemented.
Yes, in the same way that grocery stores started doing predictive staffing, and then quickly moved on to predictive charging "Sorry, but our models show you were supposed to have bought more milk today, so we're going to go ahead and bill you for it". I like the way you didn't even read the summary, though. Good work maintaining the Slashdot tradition.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
The police seem to have no problem analyzing data to figure out the best places and times for speed traps. It's about time they used the same principles to stop real crimes.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Well, no, we could lessen the scope of the criminal code.
Scalia has some kooky views, but this is *not* something he would support.
Predicting where crime will happen, and putting more uniforms there to stop it or catch the guys in the act? That's good. That's very good—I'd call it police work at its best. As long as it's at least a little better than random.
Predicting who is going to commit a crime and arresting them before they do it, now that would be bad. But it doesn't sound like that's what they're intending.
I think it's important to support innovations in law enforcement that actually help, especially when there are so many that do the opposite lately. Just because you're afraid of what they might decide to do next doesn't mean it's wise to trash this idea.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
The brain scans were one part of the study; the other part went on behind the scenes. The researchers had to decide which types of brain activity would indicate which intention in order to establish a computer algorithm that would read the fMRI results. The software incorporates a high degree of complexity. Brain patterns are not necessarily localized; sometimes, in order to fully grasp what's happening, you need to be able to interpret patterns from different parts of the brain simultaneously. Technological innovation plays a large part in what appears to be a successful attempt to read people's minds.
Using a combination of the brain scans and the computer software, researchers were able to "guess" whether the subject intended to add or subtract the upcoming numbers with 70 percent accuracy -- not a bad success rate for mind reading. Activity patterns in the middle of the prefrontal cortex were different depending on whether the subject intended to add or intended to subtract. The researchers essentially looked around the brain and decided, based on all of the activity they were seeing and especially the patterns of stimulation in the prefrontal cortex, whether the brain was preparing to add or subtract.
The study also proved some fascinating hypotheses set forth in other experiments that will no doubt lead to some very speedy progress in the area of mind reading via brain scan:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/mind-reading1.htm
We are only a matter of time before Law Enforcement across the country has the computing power and equipment to not only do neurological surveillance but to actually enforce thought crimes. So let's say someone on Slashdot thinks about pedophilia, and the FMRI concludes they intend to harm a child, what should be done about this person?
Maybe it's time to make a law to punish them?
Just an advanced profiling technique.
And according to the NoBama administration, profiling bad... Higher taxes good!!
As a graduate of a program that taught geographic information systems, I wish the article title weren't sensationalized to imply some Minority Report-esque pre-crime system was being used. This is just the use of mapping and geostatistics to determine at-risk areas (hotspot analysis, as mentioned in TFA), with which police resources can be deployed more efficiently. I've heard stories of this kind of predictive analytics being applied to catch a burglar who would invade homes far from his own neighbourhood, by analyzing the locations broken into and creating a probabilistic area to patrol based on that information. Put down the pitchforks and torches, 'cause the cops aren't coming for your thoughts.
All this will do is change the behavior of criminals. They'll see where police are starting to crack down & start changing their tactics. You might get a net reduction of crime of 1% or so. I'll leave whether or not that is worth the cost (both monetary & freedom) to the rest of you to debate.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
SHHH! Don't let the cops hear that intellect, they'll think you're mocking them.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Can they use this same technique to realize we don't need all these body scanners in the airports, etc.?
A unique way to learn a language: http://languageloom.com
"We've discovered a statistical correlation between skin color and likelihood to commit crime!"
FTP!
Just remember that when he says "Toronto" it means he doesn't know the answer.
Remember, "Toronto" is an Iroquois word meaning "the place where the mind narrows".
I've heard that "Ottawa" is one of its synonyms.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
"it is possible to forecast patterns of where and when homes are likely to be burgled or cars stolen by analyzing truckloads of past crime reports and other data with sophisticated computer algorithms."
They're talking about using statistics on crime history to figure out where future crimes may happen. Also,
"That information can give police an edge in figuring out where to deploy extra cars and cops to catch bad guys, or, better yet, keep them from opening that unlocked window in the first place. The process is not meant to finger specific individuals. “We focus on the likelihood of a crime being committed, not on who would commit it,” says Martin Short, a young mathematics professor who works with Brantingham."
We aren't talking about arresting people for crimes they haven't yet committed. deploying extra cars to high crime areas sounds like something police departments are, or should be, already doing.
focus on reducing the causes of crime and you kill a whole migration of birds with 1 stone.
Its been around for a while.
It's a widespread problem for inexperienced officers which can lead to an unsatisfying martial relationship.
Police officer's are supposed to react to any acts of evil or crime in our cities. To act preemptively is unlawful. I support awesome and proactive law enforcement, but not a bunch of suspicious money hunters trying to scam the cities citizens with ridiculous accusations just to make their ticket quotas.
So the cops are finally catching on to that whole "forecasting" thing that every single call centre has used since forever. Because it's far more important to know how many people are going to complain on any given day than to know how many people are going to have their lives ruined by crime.
Do you see what I did there?
My Criminal Justice teacher always taught this. The example that I remember from him was unmarked patrol cars.
When he was a captain in the local Sherrif Department he fought against using unmarked cars for patrol. His reasoning was that a visible patrol car detered criminal and traffic violations wherever it went. It also let the general public know that the police were in the area and there for you. And in case of an emergency a member of the public could quickly recognize a police vehicle to flag it down.
The only upside of the unmarked cars was that you could collect more ticket revenue easily. But ticket revenue was not the purpose of the department, so why should they give up ground in crime prevention for marginal gains in catching offenders unawares.
It boils down to the question, is it better to prevent a crime or catch the criminal after the fact?
Had some interesting points to make but they're halfway not relevant so I removed them. Leaving these because they're just about relevant.
The government at all levels can and does misuse this kind of data. They think giving "illegal" drugs to cancer patients is something worth prosecuting for. They're more interested in speed traps than stolen cars because one requires doing work and the other makes money.
You know what doesn't require sophisticated algorithms to reduce crime? Increasing patrols in neighborhoods and business areas that are frequent targets. I know you can't write press releases about it because it's nothing new, but burglars tend to move on if a patrol car passes a place every 5 minutes.
Arguably that's exactly what they're looking to do. Increase patrols in areas that computers flag as being high targets, but that is also reactive rather than proactive, meaning someone has to suffer crime until it reaches some threshold where they give a damn. There's nothing more predictive here than a monitoring system that turns red when it sees a percentage.
"Upon turning on their version of this new program for the first time for testing, before even connecting the data banks, the LA police department's computer algorithms predicted with a near-100% degree of certainty, several instances of hit-and-runs, public drunkenness, drug possession, and prostitution arrests within an irregular triangle with the 3 corners at the respective properties of Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton"
^THAT is a joke.
Maybe they could start by trying to predict where the cops will show up 3 hours later.
perhaps they are stealing because they have no jobs, no money to buy food or similar.
there must be better ways to fight crime.
Article says this is to work on areas likely to have crimes and specifically says that it isn't to predict individuals or individual crimes.
Police will never be able to predict all crime, of course, but Brantingham believes they can make a significant dent. âoeWe think you can predict and deter about 15 percent of burglaries,â he says.
I've seen quite a few posts jump to the Minority Report conclusion. Question is, is that really the best way to deter crime?
How about a simpler solution? If the cops find out that mugging typically happens on dark streets between the bar and the nearest parking garage, why not encourage local businesses, residents, and city personnel to get the place better lit?
You can easily be proactive, but being proactive about catching criminals is really stupid. Instead, be proactive about improving society - if burglaries happen in the run-down section of town, invest in improvements. Hell, if you hire local you'll likely be hiring the guy who may have been about to burgle you. Sure, that sounds fatalistic in one front, but if you pay them $100 to do something, it beats them stealing $100 from you instead.
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
Criminals could just commit crimes in places they usually don't. Or choose at random. Actually, if the police starts putting more officers in the crime ridden part of town, that means the other parts will be easier targets.
Wow sounds like the Movie Minority Report! I would love to see them arrest someone before they actually commit the crime and prove that they would have committed the crime!
It looks like you are writing a ransom note. The authorities have already been called, please remain where you are.
...for ambulances. You often see them parked and crewed up sitting in parking lots. There is an algorithm that strategically places a set number vehicles in optimal locations.
This is all this is, right? Seems like a no-brainier, to concentrate resources whey they will be most effective.
It just that the term "predictive policing" sounds like they are going to do preemptive arrests.
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
Subject says it all.
Maureen, is that you?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
How about something new like preventative policing? How about raising children so they know right from wrong and become decent people instead of just letting children grow up?
"The only way ...?"
Never trust a Social Engineer who asserts that their plan is "the only way".
-kgj
You nailed it. Predictive policing is stupid, a fancy name for crime prevention, and unless they think of crime as a symptom of an underlying problem (like the one you stated), they have reached a dead end. Moreover, this kind of crime is biased against lower class crimes. Predition: They will implement it, and in five years they will be surprised to know that crime levels haven't went down.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
If I analize all past lottery results I can predict future ones.... To bad that doesn't work....
You want to look for factors that can forecast a certain type of event or events before they occur. If you find the right ones you can take action to prevent undesirable outcomes.
The problem is proving that it works. I used to do simulation of manufacturing systems for my day job about a decade ago. The problem with it was that if you build a good model which avoided a cost, only rarely could you actually prove that the money spent on the model was worthwhile. After all, if you never incur a cost (or a crime), how do you know what the ROI on the analytic model was? Very difficult to prove most of the time since you can't prove a negative. An organization like the FBI or maybe the NYPD *might* be able to justify it but most police organizations simply would not find the ROI to be acceptable.
That's not to say simulation modeling is a bad idea. It does work and can be very powerful. But it is VERY easy to misapply it even if the analytic models are correct and validated. It also tends to be extremely expensive hire the analysts and buy the software so you have to be sure the problem is of sufficient scale to justify the expense. Then of course there is the problem of actually building the model. There is a truism that "all models are wrong - some models are useful". Getting a useful model is not always an easy thing to do. A bad (very wrong) model can sometimes be worse than no model at all.
I generally tell people that if they can solve a problem without a complicated computer simulation, they should. Most uses I've seen for simulation are somewhat like duck hunting with a howitzer. For all but the most complicated and intractable problems with lots of variables and high risk of a negative outcome there is a strong chance that there are much simpler and cheaper solutions available.
I wonder if they will predict who is going to mock them, and the harass that person in advance.
Palm trees and 8
Yeah, I'm sure that will work. Should you tell the poor people to quit massively outbreeding middle and upper class people, or should I?
Other than that, what exactly is your solution, more welfare state nonsense? That really brings people out of poverty, you know!
When we said that we wanted stuff Minority Report-like, we were talking about computer interfaces, you morons.
This is a joke right?
This is not minority report type stuff. This stuff is more like: data shows an increase in vandalism in the vicinity of the sports stadium after a championship game. OK, most people get that because the relationship is somewhat easy to grasp. However with data mining much more subtle trends in human behavior can be discovered. This sort of stuff has been done in the past with respect to consumer behavior. For example Wal Mart discovered that when news in the gulf region warned of a possible hurricane there was a spike in the sales of pop tarts. So when the news mentions a possible hurricane Wal Mart immediately relocates pop tarts from the mid west to the gulf region before there is any apparent demand.
What will most likely occur is that data mining of law enforcement records will be used to schedule and position officers in different areas depending on various inputs: season, weather, temperature, community events, sports events, etc.
I've been living in the same neighborhood for 5 years. College town. The weeks after school gets out to when their leases are up and move off for the summer (this year was 3 weeks). Rash of break ins. Cars. Houses. Empty houses looking for loot. Same time. Same 10 block square radius. EVERY YEAR. Between 1am and 5am. Since I work at night, I'm up late, I see and hear things. How hard is it to predict that? Should they be spending more time patrolling the area during this time of year to 'predictively prevent' this rash of crime? Instead of parking their donut eating asses as close to the bar strip downtown patrolling for DUII's? I don't need a bunch of tax dollars wasted telling me what is going to happen when I've seen it for myself and KNOW it's going to happen.
And, if the computer algorithms are any good, it will also show that shoplifting from grocery stores is on the rise in the week prior to Thankgiving and packages burgled from automobiles in retail store parking lots is very high between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Spending money to research the blatantly obvious is an American tradition.
Actually the point of data mining is to discover the behavioral patterns that are not obvious. It works, its been proven in retail. I have a friend who does DB work for a major fast food chain. The connections they make are incredible and they do successfully predict consumer behaviors that are verified at the cash register.
Other than that, what exactly is your solution, more welfare state nonsense? That really brings people out of poverty, you know!
J.K. Rowling just called. She'd like a word with you.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
A crime that has not been committed is not a crime.
So, this is the way it works. If a company has excess cash can could buy government bonds – or they could invest it – let us say in life insurance policies. On average they will have the same returns. Life insurance is going to be a bit more lumpy because you are not murdering your employees, but if you have enough employees the law of large numbers will smooth that out. So why would a company chose life insurance policies over government bonds? Because government bonds are taxed but life insurance payouts are not.
That if the slot machine hasn't paid out for a while, then it's "due" so you should play it. The thing about random sequences is that while they will generate a uniform pattern, that pattern is useless for predicting individual events. That is, if I start flipping coins and it begins with an unusually large number of heads, that doesn't mean that there's a higher probability of a tail to balance the heads out. All that happens is that the sheer number of subsequent flips tending to be 50/50 swamps out the spike created by those early heads.
RTFA, it seems like there's two things they're working on. One is the predictive stuff, which is bullocks.* The other is regular statistical analysis to detect problem areas, which works but AFAIK has been done for decades. They're just throwing more data at it and using computers to analyze the larger number of potential correlations between variables.
* Though I suppose in a one-man or one-team crime wave, it could have predictive value since an individual's behavior is rarely truly random.
Let's work this out in reverse. 90% of crimes are not reported. 90% of reported crimes result in no arrests. 90% of arrests result in no time served. 85% of cons are return guests of the system. 90% of cons were using drugs or alcohol, or had been, or needed the money from the crime to get more booze and/or drugs.
So how do you predict where crimes are going to happen? Just follow cons and you are there for 90% of crimes. Just arrest a con to prevent 90% of crimes. Just watch bars / liquor stores to see most cons.
Predicting crimes and arresting criminals does not decrease the crime rate, except temporarily while they are in jail. Jail / prison is not a crime deterrent, for those who survive to get released.
What does deter crime? Here is an example of successful crime deterrence. In Dade County, Florida, a local gun shop and the police force got together for a highly publicized "train women how to use guns" course. Rape dropped 90% for a while after that, even though only a few women signed up for the course. The threat of immediate gunshot wounds with possible death was a great crime deterrent. So serious consequences are required to deter criminals. Something not done by our present prison system. What is one of the lowest crime rate countries in the world? Switzerland. Why? because of the mandatory military service requirement, which ends with you take home your FALN, or whatever. Criminals do not like the idea of breaking into homes when the likelihood is very high that the homeowner is armed, trained, and dangerous.
How do you prevent crime? Stop kissing cons' butts. If they are once convicted of a violent crime, surgically insert a tag so that when they walk into public places they are known as cons, the same as store goods are tagged..After conviction they should lose their rights barring search and seizure, wiretapping, electronic bracelet tracking, etc. Give them a specific electronic bank card, so all their expenditures are tracked. And especially, they should lose all rights to apeals and technicalities getting their cases thrown out. Juries need to be told right up front of prior convictions. Juries need proper instructions.
Earth to space. We need protection from the cons, not visa versa.
wake up and hold your nose
The USA also has increased benefits as people have become unemployed. Unemployment has been extended. Financial aid has been increased. Obama passed the healthcare bill so more people are covered. Food stamp funding has been increased.
This is why the unemployment hasn't resulted in crime. People still have enough benefits to live off when they lose employment.
If we get rid of those benefits then people will have no alternative but crime.
That was on "Numb3rs", I think I remember the episode where the mathematician used an algorithm to analyze tons of data and predict where the next crime was going to take place... Oh, I remember now... that was pretty much every episode ...
There should be more police walking the streets.
Scared? Then try to understand what it's like for us.
Please, stop some bicycles from being stolen.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Actually, no, if you RTFA -- or even RTFS -- you'll see that that's what they are spending money to get away from. The last quote in TFS is particularly key here:
Just look for blacks. no computer needed
There are a couple of things they really need to think through before implementing something like this:
1. Morality: Is it OK to arrest someone because they might do something wrong? Probably not.
2. The system is spoofable. Bad guys can either hit an area that will be less policed because the algorithm said some other place half way across town is going to have a gang war. Or worse yet, they can leave crime patterns to trick the police to patrolling an area away from their main target.
3. Does it actually prevent crime? Probably not, it'll just force the criminals to another part of town. It's not like there is an overall increased police presence everywhere. They're just shifting police presence from one area to another.
It's already being done. Stephen Baker's book "Numerati" already reports the use of "Crime Scores" on individuals the same way credit scores are used by banks and health scores are used by insurance companies. Even if you have an issue with Baker's book, think about how easily such a system could be implemented.
Bob exists: Score 0.
Bob dropped out of high school. Score +1
Bob lives in high crime area. Score +1
Bob makes less than 20K/year reported IRS income. Score +1
Bob has had contact with the police in the past 3 years. Score +1
Bob makes no income. Score +2.
Bob has made no income for multiple years. Score +2
Bob is a known associate of criminals. Score +3
Bob is related to a convicted criminal. Score +4
Bob has previously been convicted of a crime. Score +10
Now think of all the wonderful ways credit scores have been screwed up...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It was Pickles all along.
It was a crappy movie with Tom Cruise and some bald bitch.
Summary: Someone watched Minority Report and now wants to start a department of pre-crime. It will never work. Those gesture-based user-interfaces may look nice but after waving and lifting their arms for a day, they'll know it's just too tiring.
I beg to disagree. The way this is worded ("to continue" to have crime reduction) they make it sounds like crime is at an all-time low. If that's really the case, why bother? Yet there's this desire for more technology to stop crime, which suggests an all-time high instead. What the police need to do is not to anticipate where crime will occur. What they need to do is to actually catch some bad guys, rather than to delegate the damages to people's insurance.
then there is no one to arrest.
Of course, this is just about predicting an increase in likelihood of where crime will bubble up, or spike; which is a fine.
I've been talking about predictive computing for years, and this is just one facet.
Another great use is to help offset the limitation of "Just in Time Delivery" models.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
O M G. They're gonna use aliens who can see the future to predict what's going to happen, aren't they? The whole computer prediction thing is a lie. It's all about 3 aliens locked in a room with electrodes hooked to their heads!
If I analize all past lottery results I can predict future ones.... To bad that doesn't work....
Are you insane? This works GREAT!
Do you know how much people are willing to pay for a lottery-winning system? Show them a picture of a yacht with bikinis, tease them with stories of telling their boss to take this job and shove it, throw in some "Doctor Who" math about how the flux capacitor can overload the warp core to discover the quantum entanglement and people will line up around the block to give you their money.
Even if they notice it doesn't work, they'll cheerfully accept that the fix is coming in a patch next week...
They won't even notice that you misspelled "analyze." :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I'd say that's perspicacious, but...
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/christiane-amanpour-uses-such-a-fancy-word-abc-has-to-define-it-in-a-graphic/
(See comments)
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Yeah, give them no place to go, no job prospects. Good thinking, moron. Then what happens? You have an ever increases population of people with only one way to make a living: Crime.
That Swiss argument is based on a faulty premise, and overlooks the cultural aspect. If you poofed away every firearm is Switzerland you would still have low crime. Why? Because it's one of the richest countries, highest educated countries, and the best social care programs.
Anywhere in the world that has good education, money, and solid social programs has low crime rate REGARDLESS of their gun laws.
How about poor, low educated countries with very few social programs in Africa where guns are widely available and genocides happen? where is your precious gun argument then?
God damn I hate that stupid incorrect correlation between Guns and crime in Switzerland propagated by the media.
And before you raise your knuckles from dragging on the floor, furrow you brow in an attempt to pound out a coherent knee jerk emotional reaction, no, I am not anti-gun. I am pro-rational thinking using facts.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ahahahaha. You're fucking kidding, right? That's a pretty brilliant insight there. We can just have all the rabble go out and write international phenomenon bestseller books! You amuse me. She's a real example of how we can, en mass, bring people out of poverty!
Don't get me wrong, by all means we can't have people dying in the streets of hunger, and we don't in the US. But other than that there's not much you can do, "education" and "the social net" are just words people like you use to make yourselves feel better, they don't solve the problem.
Maybe not having a poverty rate of over 16% would be a way?
Sounds good: we'll redefine poverty to mean "anyone who earns less than $10 a day", and crime will disappear overnight. Right?
It makes perfect sense to track trends, and apply law enforcement manpower to the area for quick response.
Of course, this is ultimately a self-defeating algorithm to some degree - as the police get better at it, the smart criminals will pursue their crimes in unpredictable or (worst) randomly-chosen locations. Then again, the cops are rarely catching the smart criminals anyway, so this is just more of the same. Experience in the US from the 1960s-1990s would suggest that a higher incidence of patrol cops in 'bad neighborhoods' simply pushes crime into the quieter, less-policed adjacent regions.
Then again, if one supposes that the bulk of crimes are crimes of opportunity and passion, and only a relative few are motivated by rational calculus, this will probably do a good job of suppressing that segment of crimes.
As they say, "when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away". Perhaps this will reduce that to "a minute" or something better.
-Styopa
In my city (Saskatoon) the prediction is quite simple. Are you in an area south of 33rd street and West of Avenue C? There will be crime.
only he can save us now and kidnap a precog so he can prove that precrime is a sham!
The only thing they are going to predict is where the cops will be at any given time a robbery or crime is committed. the same place they always are.. The local 7-11 getting their FREE coffee, or the Donut Emporium getting their FREE Donuts. Oh, you can also spot them flying by you at twice the legal limit to, you guessed it, a free lunch. They will continue to write traffic tickets, that is a given. These fat $$#%@ flat out are a joke. they have not even lifted a finger when my place was burgled and even took 4 hours to show up to fill out a report of vandalism but hey if you go 3 miles over the limit, no problem.. there they are.
Here is my problem with your statement: What if a criminal gets away with his first 4-5 crimes?
He would be doing the exact same amount of crimes as the con, but would not be marked because he has not yet been caught.
A small outline of your proposed system is that a con stands a lot worse chance of a fair trail compared to a criminal that has not yet been caught.
I do agree cons should lose some rights, IF they can still be able to make a living. If the marking is too visible, then they will be shunned by society, and resort back to crime.
Most crime in the US could be prevented by repealing the prohibition on drugs. The US has more people in prisons than any other nation on Earth, most of them for non violent crimes. Most of these are drug related. And still drugs are everywhere. There is so much money in drugs because they are criminalized that several south and central American countries are in danger of governmental collapse.
This does not mean drugs are not harmful or that people should use them, just that the drug war is doing more harm than the drugs every would.
Well no offense, but that is a biblical scale lack of foresight and a flat out attack on human rights.
I've been doing dataming and fancy algorithms for more than 10 years now. This is bull. It's the precrime coming to a place next to you. Academics don't know shit about real life, and fancy algorithms are just as smart or dumb as the person that uses them. And guess who uses them, the academics who live in a feudal system based on narrow knowledge in disconnect with everything else (blind to connections between disciplines and the bigger picture), and the police who's been starved enough so that it has to make money from crime these days.
Nice setup.
Why not spend money of findin out what is wrong with the society. What is the real disease that crime is just a symptom of ? What is the root ? But then this would be in the detriment of the 'commercial sponsors' isn't it?
After careful, detailed analysis it was discovered that a much larger number DUI arrests were made between the hours of 2AM and 3AM, and that crime rates are higher in low income neighborhoods wherein incarceration was found to increase financial strain in communities already unable to financially support law enforcement needs.
Doubtful. Though it would be interesting to know exactly how many robberies and burglaries (and rapes, assults and murders, for that matter) are done to feed & house the perpertrator's family.
Of course, if poverty is the cause there'd be no crime committed by the wealthy. Criminals will continue to be criminals in the vast majority of cases.
As long as the various police forces (and the legislatures that drive them) continue to misdirect a large proportion of their efforts, I'm not inclined to pay serious attention to any theory they might come up with about why and/or how crime can be reduced. So far, they seem to be quite focused on proving they don't know how to do their jobs worth a damn.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Our law enforcement agencies seem to have a focus that reflects politically-motivated trends and not "consumer" law enforcement. If the focus was back on plain old footwork, I think we'd see quick and real results. My girlfriend is a manager at a large change store and they've got habitual thieves who get busted, get processed, get released, and come right back at them sometimes the next day! One repeat offender didn't get the hammer dropped on him until he tried fighting a plain-clothes security guy while fleeing with merchandise.
A few years ago, I spotted a few guys trying to break into a neighbors car. I was literally *RIGHT NEXT TO THE POLICE STATION* as in I could *see* the police station across the street from my house. They never even bothered to show up. I eventually scared them off, but approaching 3 car thieves isn't something I plan on repeating.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The United States is in control of a syndicate of foreign international interests that are looking to use REGULATIONS (commerce) to invalidate the lawful course of activity that an American would otherwise enjoy in their higher standard of living.
Predicting and stopping crime before it even happens? Are you mad? That's how the Court of Law is by-passed by administrative tribunals that fee everyone into bankruptcy and slavery using regulations of their Trust indenture! Did you hear me? Rather than a claim being made against a tresspasser in the Country (ex Small claims County-court) they throw you into the municiple courts where their corporations strip you of every cultural heritage that doesn't fit the regulation. There once was a respected and honored Right to Public Vehicular Travel, but now people claim you need Insurance and Driver License both private benefits having all regulation and no substance but to make all walk of life prohibitively expensive. If someone takes your property or causes damages, then you claim it in Count Court: and if you are like a Fed and whine that $5k cap is smaller than what the dispute is worth then let me remind you that a Dollar measured under the Firs Coinage Act is worth far more than a paper US domestic "dollar" and foremost wherever you life and liberty and unhindered use of your property and unlimited liability comes in obverse to the $5k Small Claims capacity then the sky is the limit for the daily payment plan that you MUST offer in every notice to whomever has rationed your verry limbs from you prior capacity.
It is my experience that all these bogus regulations are being passed into law because the United States is intentionally dominating the landscape of America to move as much immigrant population and foreign imported slave-made property because the secondary goal of that regulation (or primary goal, if you read it correctly) is to gain the trust of surveilance to glean Americans of their non-regulated intelligence to make a living off-grid outside of the United States perview like how the several States and the republics around always achieved before being incorporated by the bankruptcy charters.When COPS and US Government employees stop you for a trafficking issue in your automobile, they always site regulations of Motor Vehicules under commerce clauses to sift through what they call as your "cargo" and "passengers" and "property" that you are "transporting" for Hire or Compensation or Profit true to the Legislature's original enactment before being codified into corporate-State law: this gives the officers ample time to look through your paperwork, write a note in their schedule of your where-abouts to track you by site rather than carry their geo-positional equipment, and find-out how you make a living without paying taxes and fees to them. You know what happens when Americans and nationals travel the old paths and roads to a decent living: government disappears, there is no trust, only men and their 2nd-amendment rights. Every instance of governments trying to preserve theirselves has been more about them maintaining their standard of living while rendering their host population to squallor. What more to achieve this when Intelligence agents known as COPS have a presumed confidence of trust to search through your self-property they deem by assumption of being someone else's that you are transporting? The nexus begins with their private contract to do something otherwise unlawful on the road: Driver Licenses are their nexus. If they can't pin you with one regulation, they go through their entire list from business licenses, expired certifications that weren't rescinded of their signatures, birth certificates, bank account agreements that grandfather you to future regulations despite having been closed a long time ago with no balance.
The United States is a giant scam to squeeze as much of itself outside of it's 10 square-mile domain known as the District of Columbia, and it achieves this through the 14th Amendment to re-condition your State rights to conditional rights so-long as it doesn't conflict with their future interests..
I didn't think it was possible to write this kind of an article without making an unnecessary comparison to minority report (you know like that one we seen whenever someone uses their hands to do something with technology). They honestly deserve something without trying to parade out that tired dead horse.
"In case" you missed it : this software predicts the LOCATION of criminal behavior.
Even if, personally, I don't see what is wrong with profiling. Just calculate how much more effective an inspection can be if there is a 1% increased chance based on some visible property of a person. You'll be utterly amazed by how much this can reduce crime. And then keep in mind that 10% is not at all strange, and the end effect will be equalization : the result is that many more criminals are caught, and the effectiveness of the profiling drops to zero over time.
And why does it drop ? For exactly the right reason : because what used to be unequal (to take the racist, yet obviously true, point : there are much more black criminal muggers than white ones) becomes equal : over time the chance of a white person being criminal will become exactly the same as the chance of a black person being a criminal.
Of course, in the very short term, yes, there will be a potentially rather large difference in the treatment of different ethnic groups ... but that situation existed already, so what's the fucking problem ? And of course, there's the "tolerant" alternative : some ethnic groups commits more crimes, but because the police is de-facto forced to lower controls to get an "even" ratio in the people caught, the only choice the police have is to let known criminals commit crimes freely if they have the correct skin color (or whatever distinguishes their group). Letting people commit crimes is effectively the same as encouraging them. So the real consequence of tolerance is that you're taking whatever group is slightly more criminal to start with, and almost forcing them to all become criminals.
But it's the perfect policy, "tolerance" and "racial quotas" : it sounds good, it's extremely short term effects seem to be exactly what you're gunning for, and in the medium and long term, you're accomplishing exactly the opposite of what you want. Racial quotas in universities, for example, make it in practice harder for black people to become well-educated. Racial quotas in police arrests *increase* minority crime rates instead of decreasing them, ... Necessitating, of course, much more government and police intervention.
"Profiling" is the way to have a truly equal society, and "positive discrimination", in all it's forms, is the way to racist hell, where all ethnic groups will be on the verge of starting a genocide against eachother. Needless to say, our politicians think the second is the good and moral idea.
And yes, sadly, I live in a region where "positive discrimination" is heavily practiced, and it has exactly the effects described here.
Is this before or after the mighty NYPD ditches their typewritters?
Why don't they just declare fucking Marshall LAW? That's got to be a fantasy for all those proactive ball-busting 'Predicts' who just look for trouble, now before it starts, maybe just push a little harder now.
If they want to predict higher crime areas and then add an extra patrol in the area I'm OK with that.
If they start venturing into the 'who', or getting invasive with the 'where' ( like an excuse to search your home ) then we have a major problem.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... who gets to defining what a crime is?
A lot of crime is self-inflicted by so called wealthier citizens upon themselves by neglecting their communities through greed and hoarding. Capitalist society ensures "crime" but much crime in capitalist society is clearly preventable with more equitable distribution of wealth. When people live necessitous lives
You'd all do well to read FDR's economic bill of rights where he says:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.”[2] People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Just curious, how exactly do you expect to accomplish that? I think it would be great if we all were rich, but do you have any idea how to get there?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'd settle for more than .9 cops per 1,000 people in a crime ridden city before switching to something like this.
It doesn't matter if you know where the crimes will be occurring in a city like Detroit or Flint. You don't have enough cops to cover those areas, let alone the larger city. Less than 1 cop per 1,000 doesn't cut it in crime areas, which is what we have in the crappy parts of Michigan.
way more to prevent crime than investment in these kinds of things will.
Tax the fuck out of the regressives, like we used to do, so they keep their wealth in motion, in business, instead of gambling and big boats. take those dollars, and start another national build out, like we did last time, launch a mission to Mars, and pay for solid education (again), putting a lot of people to work, and presenting them with opportunity.
Excessive crime is what we get for failing to value people properly. It's a priority problem, not a technical one.
And, with that kind of policy in place, hiring a few more officers would be a no brainer too. Keep the fancy code, it might do some good, but it will do one hell of a lot more good coupled with more appropriate trade and tax policy than it will otherwise.
Blogging because I can...
So this is how it works:
Step 1: Company takes excess cash and gives it to the insurance company, buying life insurance.
Step 2: Insurance company invest the cash in bonds. It can be government bonds or high quality corporate bonds.
Step 3. Wait until the employee dies.
Step 4: Profit! How...
Insurance Company: Earns a management fee and a risk fee. Let's call it 100 basis points per year. Not much but you make it up in volume.
Company: It earns the interest on the bonds, less the insurance company's take - TAX FREE! Remember, the death benefit is tax free.
Dead Employee: Nothing happens to them. Their really not in the picture in any meaningful way. They are not doing anything horrible to the dead employee. They paid for the life insurance so it's not like they are stealing anything from the employee. Ghoulish - Yes.
Government: They lose. They miss out on the income which is normally taxable. Now, I am a small government libertarian - but I have issues with this. Not because it is ghoulish but because it is a tax dodge. Everybody should pay their fair share of taxes [low] - but this is a tax dodge that serves no economic purpose and tends to favor the large, well established companies - hardly fair.
Wow, your plan seems airtight. Please elaborate the portion where you explain how people who have been so "tagged" are able to find legitimate sources of income, so they do not return to crime.
I heard a story long time ago about the NYPD trying this voodoo shit, as I recall it did not end well, someone got arrested due to a "software bug" and because he was black. Makes me wonder how much more debt they want your government to be in?
I have this sneaking suspicion that we would have less crime in California if the government there recognized people's right to self defense. The criminals are all armed but the law abiding citizen is not. That is because people have a respect for the law but the criminal does not. If the state cannot reciprocate on that respect to the people then at some point the people will lose respect for the state. A lack of respect for the state means uncontainable crime, like what we see in other places where there is little respect for individual rights, like Cuba, Mexico, Jamaica, and Venezuela.
As long as we are talking about near tyrannies with little respect for the individual right of self defense and uncontrollable crime I'll mention Chicago, New York City, and the District of Columbia. It's only recently with court cases recognizing the right to self defense are we now seeing people getting the recognition of keeping a loaded firearm in the home. As a result crime has gone down. There are now more court cases to extend that right of self defense to outside the home. People are becoming very upset with the crime problem, reductions in manpower within the police forces (because of government mismanagement, but that is a separate issue), and increasing response times of the police (due in large part to the reductions in police funding).
Allowing the citizens to arm themselves costs the government nothing, reduces crime, and empowers the individual. The article even mentioned that most crime is opportunistic, an armed public reduces the opportunity of the criminal to cause crime without threat of injury or death from a law abiding citizen that does not appreciate being mugged, raped, or killed. An armed public makes the criminal think real hard about whether or not the victim might defend their property, family, or self.
So, rather than spending all this money on more police, more computers, more cameras, more software, and more laws, I suggest that they allow the public to participate in the policing of the community. This country is based on the principle that the people can govern themselves, that the government is made of the people. This principle requires a certain amount of police power to lie with the individual. We already have the concept of a citizen arrest. It's rather difficult for a person to follow through with this police power if they lack even the simplest of tools to carry out that power. The people need the tools to hold a criminal until the police arrive, they need the tools to secure a crime scene until the police arrive. They need guns.
I grow tired of the government trying to fix problems with more government as if it is impossible to actually repeal a law. It is possible. It is necessary in fact. If the government does not reduce its size then either the people will lose respect for the government and it collapses, or the government will grow to such a size that it will collapse under its own weight from unsustainable taxation and spending.
Wisconsin just had a shall issue permit to carry concealed weapons signed into law. Wyoming just had a permitless concealed weapons law go into effect. California still lives under a Jim Crow era law where a person must prove "need" to carry a concealed weapon which means that sheriffs will often reward contributors to his/her campaign with a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Government corruption is inherent when the government claims control over the right to self defense. Just look at Chicago, NYC, DC, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico, and so many other places where crime and corruption thrive. Criminals do not like armed individuals. When the government disarms the individual its difficult to differentiate between the criminals and the government.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Wasn't this the plot of an episode of Max Headroom?
Jeremy Lee | Orinoco
I think we are pretty much screwed if a group of smart burglars finds a way to predict the "predictive policing". Or will this remedy include protection against prediction of predicting predictive patterns? ^^
I think it would be great if we all were rich
It would only remove some property crimes. Thieves instead of breaking into your house would be relaxing at best resorts of the world.
However the most serious, most violent crime is not directly related to the wealth. If you take 100 gangbangers and give them $1M each they will be still roaming streets. This is because that's what they like to do. Beating people gives them the thrill; they are drunk on strong emotions. Those guys will be simply spending their money on bling and lawyers, not on investing or on buying good houses.
Please elaborate the portion where you explain how people who have been so "tagged" are able to find legitimate sources of income, so they do not return to crime.
This whole scenario has been discussed many times on many forums. Basically there are three ways you can deal with criminals: rehabilitation, permanent incarceration or extermination. Anything else simply allows the criminal to walk free and commit more crime.
The world in general tries to rehabilitate criminals. Some do get better - those that weren't a lost bunch to begin with. You might one day get drunk, drive a car and kill someone. You'd be sorry the moment you sobered up, and probably you won't even contest the accusations. You'd take your punishment, get released and never do such a thing again. But far more criminals don't feel remorse, and they will gladly do the same thing again. (They aren't smart, and it shows.) They can't be rehabilitated.
Imprisonment for life (or exile to Australia) is not possible for many reasons. The system of parole is working overtime; but in any case the costs of keeping a man alive and reasonably well for all his life are astronomical.
Extermination was common in past centuries, and while it physically culled the population of criminals, it didn't actually serve as a warning to others. Every criminal (not being very smart) believed that he will not get caught. Perhaps there was some statistic in favor of that opinion. Jack the Ripper was never caught, for example.
To summarize, people who can be rehabilitated should be released back into society and all their rights should be restored, in full. They paid the price already. Anything less would only serve to further demoralize them. Other help may be necessary, like changing the name. The law enforcement would know who is who, but the employer in a different city will not. If we give a man a second chance we should do it well.
However if a person commits a crime for the second time he should be incarcerated for life. To save costs, that life should be limited to a few weeks while his appeals are reviewed. Once that is over, the convict is terminated. Perhaps this is barbaric, but the last thing we have shortage of on this planet is people; and of all people, the last kind we need is recidivists.
The police takes some "smart" action to catch the criminals, and the criminals change their behavior.
repeat, wash and rinse a few times and in the end you have criminals with behavior for which there is practically no response to, and the original problem is still there, only worse.
Don't be silly, if the police starts "predicting" where the next burglary will take place, the criminals will simply adapt their behavior.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
First of all, yeah, crime is lower now then its been, like..ever. Second, we already have WAY TOO MANY people in prison. Third, cancelling all the drugwar related things (prisons, police raids, innocents killed by police, drug cartels) would bring us a lot more money. Prisons are expensive. Fourth, of course, just see Wisconsin. The corporate owned prisons there have done an impeccable job: now that they cant collectively bargain in Wisconsin, they have to use Slave Labor to do so. I cant think of any other word for prisoners being given to corporations to work for ZERO money, and considering how many innocent people are in jail it means that, even if doing that to prisoners was okay (It-Is-Not.) then we'd be enslaving innocent people! Buuut no one really cared when I said the same thing about using the death sentence to kill innocent people. SO I dont expect this to push it over the edge...My boyfriend used to be in favor of such a penalty. I asked him, "So itd be okay if I was killed by the state, because the system is mostly good?" Felt like a bit of a jerk after saying it but i got the point across. These atrocities have to end. And the corporations have managed to get everyone whiupped up in false fear, to the point where ANY reduciton of "crime" fighting (hurting innocents in victimless crimes) will be used as fodder in politics. One more thing, just to make sure it is absolutely clear : Crime Rates Are Very Very Very Very Low. VERY LOW. *Very low!* and so on. Dont believe the hype. We're all in danger of being the next dead or enslaved innocent. And we always will be until we end this abomination
or, more specifically, statistical analysis repeatedly shows a correlation between the size of groups of people doing regular meditation and the reduction of crime in a particular area. and, ironically in some cases, a dramatic and statistically significant increase in reports of crime! [yes that's right, increased *reporting* of criminal activity, rather than "increases in actual criminal activity"...]
What would the prep be charged with?
Turns out one of them did not agree with the other two about the pre-crime sometimes.
Those who are not familiar with the components of a shirt thank you for that clarification.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If the system works and the cops are there hiding in the bushes where they expect a crime to occur, will they stop the crime from occurring or let it happen so they can make the bust? If the latter, what happens when someone gets killed as a result of the cops ALLOWing the crime to occur? Also, doesn't that make them accomplices? Of course, if the former, does the perp get convicted of the next drain on our Constitution: thinking about committing a crime. Just wondering, 'sall
Isnt this the whole premise of that movie, that we will be able to predict a criminal act before it happens...and while we are there and about to witness, it we can stop it from happening (murder etc...) so the charge only becomes attempted murder and not murder...so technically, the whole system will be defunk as now you can not
intervene if you want the full complete act and associated punishment, or a lesser crime as you did not want to allow said act from happening but still wanted to "nab" the criminal in the process.
"Collar" is also a police slang term for arrest.