Crime Prediction Software 'Adopted By 14 UK Police Forces' (bbc.com)

At least 14 UK police forces have made use of crime-prediction software or plan to do so, according to Liberty. From a report: The human rights group said [PDF] it had sent a total of 90 Freedom of Information requests out last year to discover which forces used the technology. It believes the programs involved can lead to biased policing strategies that unfairly focus on ethnic minorities and lower-income communities. And it said there had been a "severe lack of transparency" about the matter. Defenders of the technology say it can provide new insights into gun and knife crime, sex trafficking and other potentially life-threatening offences at a time when police budgets are under pressure.

Comments

minority

[bugs2squash]

A pool of water with three people in it has been created. Police are looking into it

Like the stock market

[WoodstockJeff]

"Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns".

But, in the case of past criminal activity, areas that have a history of high crime are still likely to have high crime in the future.

But saying that, and acting on it, has now become racism, because a lot of high crime area also happen to be areas where minorities live. Increasing patrolling of those areas to help reduce crime have a high chance of finding minority offenders committing crime.

Should the police REDUCE their patrols in those high-crime areas, they'll be accused of racism for not protecting those minorities.

People who live in those areas should be asking themselves what the motives are of the groups trying to stop the police from doing their jobs.

Re:Like the stock market

[alvinrod]

No one suggest cops raid houses of citizens with nice cars and big houses. Just keep busting the doors down in the slums and getting the same results as always.

Removing everything else from the equation, if your goal is to stop the illegal sale of drugs, it makes far more sense to target the point of sale than it does to go after all of the buyers individually. It's also a matter of how much punishment can be handed out since a person with a first possession charge who only has a small amount of some substance will see less punishment than a person with a large amount of that substance and likely previous criminal history. It's also easier to catch buyers in the act while busting the supplier since they're more concentrated.

There's a lot of extra baggage saddled on top of that, but if you just remove all of that and look at it like a simple problem detached from actual people and their individual characteristics, the decisions seem rather obvious. It is as you point out a bit of insanity, because it doesn't matter how many drug dealers you arrest, since people want to buy more. Viewed purely from a perspective of economic principles that action is foolish since reducing the supply only drives up prices which signal others that they should engage in that activity as it is now even more profitable for them to do so.

I think we'll eventually come around to decriminalizing and legalizing all drugs. However, that isn't going to fix bad neighborhoods. They'll still be poor and likely turning to some other form of crime to get by. Not necessarily because they're bad people, but because a lot of other foolish decisions that we've made had made it incredibly difficult for those people to legally do anything productive that is as profitable as crime is for them.

Re:Like the stock market

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Side point: giving people jobs with a living wage is one of the fastest ways to reduce crime.

Some folks are just plain greedy. A lot of Wall Street types earn way more than a living wage, yet they still manage to get themselves entangled in criminal financial shenanigans.

It would be very amusing if this crime prediction AI directed police patrol cars to London's financial district.

Re:Like the stock market

[pgmrdlm]

Um, you DO KNOW that there are numerous examples of African American police officers using excessive force on African American citizens. Don't you?

https://psmag.com/social-justi...

Re:Like the stock market

[BringsApples]

They're not training this software with tales-of-the-rich-and-famous. They're training it with the likes of everyday people that make up a majority of petty criminals.

The big-time criminals are all safe from such in their elected positions.

presumed...

[guygo]

Guilty until proven innocent. Just what every totalitarian government needs to keep whomever they don't like locked up and silent.

Re:Wow ...

[Oswald McWeany]

So, police forces in the UK are using Chinese technology to further spy on their citizens.

Apparently having a Queen makes you stupid enough to stand for this shit.

Sorry, the old hag is on my money, but she and her clan can die in a fire or fuck the hell off.

They'll never have any actual freedom as long as people believe the bullshit that the royals are somehow special.

Well, first off, UK spying on their citizens isn't anything new. Britain's high streets have been under the eye of cameras for decades now. You almost have to assume if you're outside on a street in Britain that at least one camera is recording you.

As for "real freedom" that's fairly subjective based on what you consider freedom to be. There probably isn't any country in the world that everyone would say is a perfect bastion of freedom- because it's a precarious balance. Some would consider the US to be less free with it's lack of representative vote (electoral system), a political system that is biased towards a two party system, lack of an unbiased media (everything leans one way or the other to a degree), world's highest incarceration rate, lack of egalitarian education or health systems. (wealthy areas have much better schools, and rich people get better care). Lots of "morality laws" based on drugs, alcohol, sexual morality.

As for the Queen, yeah, I'm against her too, or at least her receiving tax payer money. Many will bring up the strawmen of tourists and the Crown Estate as reasons to keep the Queen; as if, making her a private citizen and not receiving public money would stop the tourists coming. And as for the Crown Estate, it is owned by the people of the UK. Government took over responsibility of the Crown Estate in exchange for taking over some of the debts that the royal family had run up. The Crown Estate does not belong to the person wearing the Crown. (The Queen does have substantial wealth and holdings of her own though that are separate to the Crown Estate).

All that said, the Queen has no impact on "Freedom" in the UK. She has very little power to impact the world for reasons of Good or Evil.

Re:Could be Good... Could be Bad.

[ChromeAeonuim]

We're talking about the country that arrested someone over a Nazi pug joke. We know exactly which way they're going with regards to surveillance and thoughtcrime.

Human rights are destroying the UK

[Ashthon]

It believes the programs involved can lead to biased policing strategies that unfairly focus on ethnic minorities and lower-income communities.

Policing should be focused on high-crime sections of the community, since that's where it's needed most. It would be absurd to send the police to wealthy low-crime suburbs and have them walking around doing nothing. If the police were to ignore the crime taking place in low-income communities, the ones who suffer most of the people who live in those communities. I know that because I live in one. Where my parents live there are 25 reported crimes within a 1 mile radius in a month, while where I live there are 650 reported crimes within a one mile radius. I want the police here, tackling crime, not scared of coming here because it wouldn't be politically correct to investigate crime in a low-income area because some arseholes in an ivory tower are worried about "human rights."

People like this libertyhumanrights.org.uk are a major part of the problem, and are the reason crime is spiralling out of control. We've got police scared to investigate Muslim rape gangs because they fear being called racists, so young girls are left to be abused. We've got police scared to stop and search black people out of fear of being called racists, so children in back communities are being stabbed on their way to and from school. We've got police scared of tackling crime in low-income areas because that's apparently against the human rights of criminals, so crime is left to go out of control. Meanwhile, what police are investigating is "non-crime hate incidents" where somebody posted a nasty comment on Twitter, because the out-of-touch leaders of the country think that's the priority.

Political correctness is absolutely destroying UK society and things are becoming visibly worse on the streets. The police have become largely irrelevant in many communities, and I don't even waste my time reporting crime to them since I know from past attempts to report serious crime that they will do absolutely nothing. The other day I saw some boys with an air rifle leaned against the wall of a school, shooting it into the school. I ignored it any carried on with my day because I'm well aware that the police are more interested in political correctness and "non-crime hate incidents" than tackling crime. The crime figures here are a fraction of the actual crime rate, but most crime simply goes unreported because the police have become so ineffective it's simply not worth bothering. Sure, if there was a "non-crime hate incident" that's worth reporting as they'll have a van full of officers there in minutes, but if an actual crime is taking place then you're wasting your time.

Policing in the UK urgently needs reforming, but sadly people of influence, like this ibertyhumanrights.org.uk, are more interested in rearranging the deck chairs while the ship sinks.

Re:Could be Good... Could be Bad.

[jellomizer]

In terms of morals, Net Positive and Net Negative isn't good enough.
How we handle justice in a society is a strong indication of our real morals as a society.
It is really easy to justify immoral cruelty, if there is a strong net benefit. But it isn't the right thing to do. Even if nicer way of doing things has less of a net benefit, it is probably the better more moral thing to do.

The big problem as you had stated the true-net value isn't obvious and may not be calculated for a long time. There is only so much oppression a group can handle, and also if a group isn't allowed to be shared the benefits of society, they will not follow the rules of that society, and make their own sub groups, thus for a program to help identify crime, would find a stronger correlation to that area.

Re:POLICE SUPPOSED TO STAY AWAY FROM MINORITIES???

[Junta]

I think it depends on exactly *how* these 'predictions' are used. If it is used to plan patrols, then in *theory* having patrols in the area should be nothing to fear. If it is used as 'evidence', that would be dumb. If it is used to influence sentencing, that too is dumb and has already been shown to be a problem.

In the planning patrols use case, it only seems wrong because the relationship between the police and citizenry is dysfunctional. In an ideal system, law-abiding citizens *shouldn't* feel persecuted just because there are police patrols nearby. In fact, it should be reassuring. However that is largely not the relationship that has been cultivated between the police and other folks.