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Academics Confirm Major Predictive Policing Algorithm Is Fundamentally Flawed (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Last week, Motherboard published an investigation which revealed that law enforcement agencies around the country are using PredPol -- a predictive policing software that once cited the controversial, unproven "broken windows" policing theory as a part of its best practices. Our report showed that local police in Kansas, Washington, South Carolina, California, Georgia, Utah, and Michigan are using or have used the software. In a 2014 presentation to police departments obtained by Motherboard, the company says that the software is "based on nearly seven years of detailed academic research into the causes of crime pattern formation the mathematics looks complicated -- and it is complicated for normal mortal humans -- but the behaviors upon which the math is based are very understandable."
The company says those behaviors are "repeat victimization" of an address, "near-repeat victimization" (the proximity of other addresses to previously reported crimes), and "local search" (criminals are likely to commit crimes near their homes or near other crimes they've committed, PredPol says.) But academics Motherboard spoke to say that the mathematical theory that is used to power PredPol is flawed, and that its algorithm -- at least as pitched to police -- is far too simplistic to actually predict crime. Kristian Lum, who co-wrote a 2016 paper that tested the algorithmic mechanisms of PredPol with real crime data, told Motherboard in a phone call that although PredPol is powered by complicated-looking mathematical formulas, its actual function can be summarized as a moving average -- or an average of subsets within a data set. "The academic foundation for PredPol's software takes a statistical modeling method used to predict earthquakes and apply it to crime," reports Motherboard. "Much like how earthquakes are likely to appear in similar places, the papers argue, crimes are also likely to occur in similar places. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computing at the University of Utah and a member of the board of directors for ACLU Utah, told Motherboard that earthquake data and crime data are, naturally, collected in different ways."
"I would say in our mind, the key difference is that in earthquake models, you have seismographs everywhere -- wherever an earthquake happens, you'll find it," Venkatasubramanian said. "The crux of the issue really is that to what extent are you able to get data about what you're observing that is not also totally on the model itself." "If you build predictive policing, you are essentially sending police to certain neighborhoods based on what what they told you -- but that also means you're not sending police to other neighborhoods because the system didn't tell you to go there," Venkatasubramanian said. "If you assume that the data collection for your system is generated by police whom you sent to certain neighborhoods, then essentially your model is controlling the next round of data you get."
The company says those behaviors are "repeat victimization" of an address, "near-repeat victimization" (the proximity of other addresses to previously reported crimes), and "local search" (criminals are likely to commit crimes near their homes or near other crimes they've committed, PredPol says.) But academics Motherboard spoke to say that the mathematical theory that is used to power PredPol is flawed, and that its algorithm -- at least as pitched to police -- is far too simplistic to actually predict crime. Kristian Lum, who co-wrote a 2016 paper that tested the algorithmic mechanisms of PredPol with real crime data, told Motherboard in a phone call that although PredPol is powered by complicated-looking mathematical formulas, its actual function can be summarized as a moving average -- or an average of subsets within a data set. "The academic foundation for PredPol's software takes a statistical modeling method used to predict earthquakes and apply it to crime," reports Motherboard. "Much like how earthquakes are likely to appear in similar places, the papers argue, crimes are also likely to occur in similar places. Suresh Venkatasubramanian, a professor of computing at the University of Utah and a member of the board of directors for ACLU Utah, told Motherboard that earthquake data and crime data are, naturally, collected in different ways."
"I would say in our mind, the key difference is that in earthquake models, you have seismographs everywhere -- wherever an earthquake happens, you'll find it," Venkatasubramanian said. "The crux of the issue really is that to what extent are you able to get data about what you're observing that is not also totally on the model itself." "If you build predictive policing, you are essentially sending police to certain neighborhoods based on what what they told you -- but that also means you're not sending police to other neighborhoods because the system didn't tell you to go there," Venkatasubramanian said. "If you assume that the data collection for your system is generated by police whom you sent to certain neighborhoods, then essentially your model is controlling the next round of data you get."
Why don't you take a look to Canada, which uses a similar method as EU countries in terms of dealing with recidivism. The reality is, the recidivism rate is still around 80% and that's after all the various programs ranging from training to psychological treatments have been applied. Got a lot of people in prison up here for child rape, violent assault, rape, and a lot of people not getting put into prison despite 200+ convictions for violent assaults because "they're natives(aka indigenous population)" aka "government bad, systemic oppression(society) made me into the way I am!" bullshit going on from the gladeu report.
The US has a serious problem with black crime(broken homes, generational, no-opportunities, open government handouts, ghettoization, substance abuse, etc), but nobody really wants to look at it and go "well what the fuck are we doing and throwing money at this shit for, instead of doing concrete things that nobody will like." Here in Canada, we have the exact same problem with natives, with exactly the same issues. You might have heard about the indigenous missing women's investigation and whatnot, if not simply put: Indigenous women were disappearing at a very high rate, never to be seen again. The previous report, much like the current investigation is a rehash of the same thing. Nearly 90% of the disappearances were directly attributed to issues within the community. In other words, they were killing their own women and there's probably a handful or two of indigenous serial killers that prey exactly on that group because so many go missing. Again, nobody wants to actually look at this in an actual way - because when someone does the first response from progressive media is to start screeching "that's racist."
Finally pre-90s is a bad place to get crime statistics from. Lead in the air was pretty obviously creating unhinged people. Again, there's plenty of studies to back this up because it's the only thing that can explain the across the board drop in crime.
That would be wrong, because during the 70's and early 80's with those "worst case" eras of crime, there was a shitload of other things going on. Everything from deflation to hyperinflation, to new 'social diseases' of the period such as heavy drug use and whatnot. The deflationary period where wages decreased by upto 25% in some cases over a 8 year span, followed by living costs exploding by 25% a year had a lot to do with the spike in all levels of crime. Lead is an easy way out, but the factors are far more reaching.
Om, nomnomnom...