Predictive Policing - Fails There is no evidence to support predictive policing. The algorithm will automatically miss 50% of crimes Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 24, 2016, “Is Predictive Policing the Law-Enforcement Tactic of the Future? NO: It Is Ineffective and Will Increase Police Bias,” Wall St. Journal, Accessed 5-4-2016 There is little data to back up claims by makers of predictive-policing systems that their products actually work. In fact, one of the few available—by Rand Corp.—found that predicting technology used in Shreveport, La., was ineffective at reducing crime. This is likely due to the way predictive systems work. All predictive-policing systems analyze historical crime data to predict where crimes are likely to occur in the future. Some also rely on weather data, consumer financial data, property records and even information about family members or gathered from social-media posts to predict who is likely to be involved in future crimes. But these systems aren’t clairvoyant. Because algorithm-training models must rely on data about known past crimes, they can only predict future incidents that resemble the nature, time and location of prior crimes. That means predictive-policing systems will miss at least 50% of crime because we only have data on about that occurs in the U.S., according to government estimates; the other half is never reported. The result is that systems will miss crimes that don’t fit patterns from the past, and law-enforcement agencies will devote more resources to looking for crimes they would already have found the old-fashioned way and less on crimes that require longer and deeper investigations.
Predictive Policing - Fails There is no evidence to support predictive policing. The algorithm will automatically miss 50% of crimes Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, April 24, 2016, “Is Predictive Policing the Law-Enforcement Tactic of the Future? NO: It Is Ineffective and Will Increase Police Bias,” Wall St. Journal, Accessed 5-4-2016 There is little data to back up claims by makers of predictive-policing systems that their products actually work. In fact, one of the few available—by Rand Corp.—found that predicting technology used in Shreveport, La., was ineffective at reducing crime. This is likely due to the way predictive systems work. All predictive-policing systems analyze historical crime data to predict where crimes are likely to occur in the future. Some also rely on weather data, consumer financial data, property records and even information about family members or gathered from social-media posts to predict who is likely to be involved in future crimes. But these systems aren’t clairvoyant. Because algorithm-training models must rely on data about known past crimes, they can only predict future incidents that resemble the nature, time and location of prior crimes. That means predictive-policing systems will miss at least 50% of crime because we only have data on about that occurs in the U.S., according to government estimates; the other half is never reported. The result is that systems will miss crimes that don’t fit patterns from the past, and law-enforcement agencies will devote more resources to looking for crimes they would already have found the old-fashioned way and less on crimes that require longer and deeper investigations.
18-may-surveillance.docx