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The Increasing Role of Predictive Analysis In Police Work
elucido writes "A growing number of law enforcement agencies, in the US and elsewhere, have been adopting software tools with predictive analytics, based on algorithms that aim to predict crimes before they happen. From the article: 'Without some of the sci-fi gimmickry, police departments from Santa Cruz, California, to Memphis, Tennessee, and law enforcement agencies from Poland to Britain have adopted these new techniques.
The premise is simple: criminals follow patterns, and with software — the same kind that retailers like Wal-Mart and Amazon use to determine consumer purchasing trends — police can determine where the next crime will occur and sometimes prevent it.'"
When prediction goes, one could always predict that, given a time frame, something will definitely happen - such as plane crash
If TPTB is really interested in saving lives, they could have done more to predict future plane crashes and then do something to prevent it from happening
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I imagine patrol cops go where they expect some action may occur (or to stops that offer cheap food/drink for the uniformed). This sounds like a higher tech version of that, basically taking the instincts out of the equation and substituting it with statistics. Perhaps adds more coordination at the central office level too although I'm sure that also already occurs.
Ok, so first, if the crime doesn't happen, how do you know you prevented it? Maybe it just didn't happen.
Second, doesn't this seem like there will now be a market for anti-prediction? That is, find out where the cops think the crime will occur, and do the crime somewhere else. Because the cops will be somewhere else, your chances of getting caught are less.
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Unfortunately individual police officers were drawing from a much smaller pool of data which was then put through their personal biases. If an officer had a racial or cultural bias then they may perceive an area as having more crime, when the actual statistics don't match.
Technically a good cop with good instincts is applying statistics. The human brain is built to recognize patterns and to use those patterns to make predictions. Some of this is done at a subconscious level. So its not that we are necessarily introducing statistics, its seems more that we are using a much larger data set to mine patterns from. Still, as you say, a high tech version of what we already do.
Very true. I cop friend of mine often gets asked "how did you know it was me?" and his answer is "because you always commit crime x by doing y."Ashe puts it, most criminals are stupid, or at least we only catch the stupid ones. This analysis just builds on what people's brain does naturally, with a more robust data set as you point out. Plus, it never forgets a crime.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
>Now I know that in the case of blacks it is due to social deprivation, etc. - I am not blaming them - but it is a fact that they commit more crime.
No it's not. There is no evidence to support your claim. The evidence you're about to cite - actually proves something else: more black people are CONVICTED of crimes, but that doesn't prove they COMMIT more crimes. You'd see the exact same thing if, for example, they just get CAUGHT more often. You'd also see the exact same thing if they were generally poorer, and thus had worse lawyers and therefore were more likely to be convicted than an equally guilty white person.
Now we have STRONG evidence supporting the idea that they get caught more often (the very police biasses that you mention suggest they would get more attention on them) and you yourself acknowledged the evidence that they are more likely to be convicted because they can't afford high quality lawyers who are good at getting guilty people off.
See there is absolutely no proof that white people commit LESS crime than black people - there is only proof that white people are less likely to be CONVICTED, those are NOT the same thing as there are not one but TWO mutually reinforcing explanations for that scenario -both of which provably exist.
More-over, while perhaps a lot of street criminals are of a particular race - street criminals in the real world are almost NEVER self-employed, they always work within syndicates (because syndicates tend to kill freelancers who interfere with their territory) and the evidence suggests that the people at the TOP of the syndicates are overwhelmingly wealthy people - from wealthy backgrounds - and disproportionately white.
But those people are almost never caught.
Black people commit more crimes? Well it's possible you're right- but there is NO evidence to support that position, and certainly none that supports the idea that white people commit LESS crimes - only that white people don't get caught as often.
So Occam's razor suggests that in fact the likelihood of somebody committing a crime is an individual measurement in which group membership/dynamics play little or no role.
Just like there is no proof that muslims commit most acts of terrorism. In fact, there seems to be a massive amount of terrorist attacks done by Christians. Muslims may have destroyed the WTC but they weren't the first to try - that was Timothy McVeigh. They just did it better.
The Norway shooter was a radical Christian conservative.
The Unabomber was an atheist.
Muslims don't commit more terrorist activities - Muslim terrorists just get more news coverage.
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