There's a lot of upcoming uses of technology and law enforcement that concern me (crowd control, non-lethal weapons, drones, cctv, etc). However, on first glance, this one seems great.
I could see an algorithm come up with a lot of interesting correlations that make sense in hindsight but might not have been thought of ahead of time. For example, maybe a particular stretch of bars the weekend after payday are more likely to have confrontations just after closing time. Or maybe certain neighborhoods are more vulnerable to robberies during a specific holiday. Or maybe specific set of sports teams pitted against each other leads to conflict outside the game.
Using police to passively deter crime rather than punish it seems like a win-win.
Police have been doing that for as long as there's been police. They are more likely to have police outside a bar at midnight on a Friday night than 2pm on a Tuesday. They are just doing it better now.
I'm not sure I'm willing to make this argument yet, but I think there is at least something to stand on to say, "Yeah, but they can be too efficient."
Perhaps, not in the case of this example. But think about GPS tracking. Before if you wanted to follow someone around you usually had to dedicate at least 4 people 24/7 to watching them. Now, just use GPS and your good to go.
It's not so much about watching the good guys, but in my view it's about not having to make the choice to allocate resources. Is this person really worth taking 8 guys (4 per 12 hour shift) off of another case/patrol, etc to watch one person. That probably prevented a lot of abuse. Now, you slap a tracker on their car and come back in two weeks and pick it up and all the data is there.
Suppose you have an upper class neighborhood that tends to collect a lot of noise complaints on the weekend. In theory sending a cop there might make an algorithm that's trying to minimize response times happy, but the reason cops tend to be stationed else-ware is to better respond to serious crimes because the station is 2 minutes away in case of a serious issues so there are better places to send cops to cover a full county. Sort of how a lot of algorithms made bad risk assessments because they had a poor understanding of what happens during a significant downturn in the housing market.
This something that I've been grappling with because it's tremendously difficult to discuss on the policy side of the police system. It's really difficult to make the argument that justice is attained more frequently when there are inefficiencies within the police system, especially when local, state, and federal governments are looking to cut costs.
The "lose" part is that officers in the area are predisposed to seeing suspicious activity where there could be none. There should be strict rules for the use of this information, but it's hard to prevent or stop human nature.
While this certainly doesn't bother me in terms of violating civil rights or anything like that, I do think the concept is potentially flawed. It gives the police hot spots for where to send their cops, but if a criminal got access to it, or can build a similar predictive model, then they would have a very good idea of where the cops would be at any given time.
In theory this works out a lot like the old halting problem proof, but in practice we may not see such an arms race.
Do you think random police proximity is a factor in stopping premeditated crimes? Moving police around will have a much greater effect on non-premeditated "mob" misbehavior than on criminal masterminds.
I'm sure this headline invokes "Minority Report" in more brains than just mine, but this isn't pinpointing individuals. It's just Really Good statistical modeling. Sounds impressive and a great way to put tax dollars to work.
Definitely. It would seem they are trying to make it sound like MR in order to put people off of it. But really, it's just really good statistical (or data) modelling.
As they said, there probably will be questions about profiling people and neighborhoods, but if the desired result is to reduce crime and it does reduce crime, does that not in fact subvert the notion of the stereotype? That's to say, if people think this might stereotype a neighborhood as one with more than normal criminal activity and this is implemented and this brings down crime, then in time, this neighborhood would be better than normal, in crimes statistically speaking and would rehabilitate the neighborhood, rather than vilify it.
Besides, in reality, it doesn't matter what the police or the mayor's office say, it matters what people on the street say. People on the street are unconcerned with being PC. They will tell you if a neighborhood is good or bad. One of the most honest assessment I have gotten is from RE agents. They don't offer any filters --they just tell you how it is, from my experience.
The main question is whether people in those neighborhoods will be treated differently. Written off as second-class citizens, denied rights like privacy rights or protections against stupid warrants, or unwarranted force becoming the default choice.
Don't deploy this and let crime continue to be fought traditionally --this results in more neighborhood crime victims and continued view of this neighborhood as crime ridden.
Deploy this technique with a long term result of decrease in crime such that it's less than that of places which did not implement this prevention technique. Once that is achieved, there would be no inclination to treat people in those places differently.
So, given those scenarios, would a neighborhood accept different treatment knowing that long term crime would decrease and thus obviate the need to be treated differently, or would they prefer to continue the status quo knowing this would allow crime to continue as it had but getting to keep their current level of civil liberties?
I know those not the only options, but given those two, I wonder what a group might choose?
Also, we do not know how this technique would affect people's civil liberties. We only guess that it would.
Allowing different treatment of individuals for any reason beyond actual reasonable doubt is a dangerously slippery slope. Simply putting law enforcement in an area that has higher crime statistics in an effort to prevent crime is a good idea. Allowing those same officers to harass people in the area that haven't committed a crime is unacceptable.
My only concern is this: if the long term effects of this project will indeed reduce crime, do we have a society that's evolved to be less criminal or so we simply lack the data (because we've actively changed it) to continue to be effective at preventing crime?
You're probably right about the slippery slope argument. There is a risk. Still, NYC (and maybe soon SF) has implemented stop and frisk, without a slippery slope, (afaik) and data seem to point to a reduction in crime.
Some people have found stop-and-frisk unacceptable, yet others find it acceptable.
I don't think measuring decrease in crime is that difficult. One can find out statistically or by way of anthropological study at the other end of the spectrum. One of the easiest ways is probably to ask the residents. do they feel that crime has risen or fallen? Ask Real Estate agents --they have a good pulse on a neighborhood.
Now, something unrelated and this is just a hunch, but I guess that neighborhoods with high home ownership would have better reception for this than neighborhoods with low ownership --not because the population prefer crime, but because a reduction in crime would have the side effect of having a positive (higher) impact on rents and that's a negative for most renters.
It was more a thought exercise. If only those two options were made available, what would a population prefer, given the track record of the technique. I'm aware that one ought not justify a means for its end, but rather otherwise (in this case a kind of elective choice).
I live in LA, and I can tell you it is huge. Huge in terms of area and huge in terms of population density. Follow any of the police scanner-reporting or neighborhood Twitter news feeds and you can count the crimes as they happen on a minute by minute basis. It's not hard to find crime in LA, and even after being exposed to these feeds I can tell you where to find something going down. But the most puzzling piece of this is how do you measure a reduction in crime? A criminal act that didn't happen isn't a crime and can't be counted as a "missed opportunity." They mention in the article that they have witnessed "double-digit drops in burglaries and other property crimes." Nine burglaries this month compared to ten last month is a double-digit drop, so can you really attribute one "missed" crime as a success? Or how about a reduction of 2 out of 20? (This is a valid example as property crimes in various police districts here rarely go into triple digits monthly, or even on a six-month basis, look for yourself [1]). Why would you assume that 1. the number of criminal acts is near-constant and 2. that your system was the actual reason for a decline? To me this feels like trying to predict roulette wins by looking at the historical numbers - it's pointless. If you can't measure your success with solid numbers, then it sounds like the only thing this system does is compile and report crime info faster than previous systems. And then someone got the bright idea to send officers to "hot zones" where they have been told crime will happen. Something happens - they were looking extra hard for crime and they found it - win, or nothing happened and they called it a "prevention" - win.
Imagine people people being able to report, not actual crime, but what could be suspicious behavior, to the police. Such "information" could be used to move resources to an area. You certainly can't harass someone based on such suspicions, but certainly can be more ready to respond if a crime does occur.
And property owners might like to know this sort of information. If someone is hanging around your parked car for example. Imagine being able to reply with "Oh, that's my teenager waiting for me to come back." or "That's my psycho-ex stalker girlfriend! And she has a crowbar!"
This makes me really excited. Recently I've gotten the distinct feeling that the time period we're living in now will be known in the future as "The Age of the Algorithm." As production and storage of information continues to explode in the next decades, algorithms will match pace, getting more and more sophisticated to deal with the vast array of inputs, and the outputs will be used to enhance society as in this article.
And then we'll accidentally create artificial intelligence! (I hope)
Let me add a slightly more negative take. If you follow police technology, no matter what's implemented, crime magically goes down! Although I can see a system like this being a high-level tool for allocating resources, the notion that it can "predict" crime is likely overblown. Where's the deep analysis to show causation, not just correlation?
I think the FBI figures are one that are pretty reliable and do not subjugate themselves to an individual department's claims.
If you're talking about UCR that's not completely true. The FBI does have reporting guidelines, but individual departments have been known to "interpret" those guidelines differently for political and funding purposes. That is one of the reasons why the FBI discourages "ranking" of metropolitan areas for crime based on UCR stats.
However, I think that your average smash and grab robbery, at least in the UK, is usually handled by the insurance companies rather than the police. The police provide a crime ref so you can claim that it is a crime and that's it. There's very little prevention or follow up done.
I doubt it'd change that much if they deployed it here.
You could offer it as an easy to use app. The would-be criminal sees an opportunity, pops out the cellphone and gets an accurate estimate of how likely it is that a cop will be around for the next couple minutes. Premium subscribers will also get advice on which possible crimes would be more profitable and likely to suceed with present police force deployment anneighborhood demographics.
Any real-time neighborhood safety app that relies on the same data the police uses (or a similarly complete dataset) intended for mapping areas suitable for, say, nightly outdoors activities, can be used for avoiding police.
The second part, I agree, is completely criminal. I doubt it will become available on any mainstream app store.
I would be very surprised. Most criminals are stupid and have poor impulse control (so elaborate planning is out of the question). While the brighter and more determined ones are unlikely to be interested in burglarising your home or tagging an overpass when they can be dealing drugs or slinging guns.
I heard a couple of cops mentioning that people ask them what the best places in a city are to buy drugs, or pick up hookers etc. They really don't know! They only know the best places to get caught for that stuff :)
"If you are victimized today the risk that you'll be a victim again goes way up,"
Speaking from personal experience there is validity in that assertion. However, I'm question any algorithm that claims to predict human behavior, particularly when it involves the police.
They don't say what methods they are employing to do this. I think I have a good idea.
A two layer neural network with input (features) as the profile of a crime in a certain city and all of the related circumstances reduced to numeric columns. That should be able to produce reliable predictions on where/when crimes happen.
Glue it together, feed it the data, refine the inputs, test the outputs and revise the inputs/features, and there you go.
And yes for the liberals, this is going to profile people on all of the politically incorrect data points, race, color, sex, orientation, drug use, etc.
> And yes for the liberals, this is going to profile people on all of the politically incorrect data points, race, color, sex, orientation, drug use, etc.
This program isn't profiling people, it's profiling crimes.
> "The new program used by LAPD and police in the Northern California city of Santa Cruz is more timely and precise, proponents said. Built on the same model for predicting aftershocks following an earthquake, the software promises to show officers what might be coming based on simple, constantly calibrated data — location, time and type of crime."
Location, time, and type of crime. Multivariate regression, not neural networks.
You are right, criminals are not profiled for gay/straight/bi/neither orientation, but if they could, a neural network would find a correlation between that column and the location of their next crime.
Thas one column would not be enough to decide with any certainty at all, however, if you pass in age, sex, weight, orientation, race, skin color, religious affiliation, address, marital status, prior convictions, languages spoken, income, has-vehicle, make/model of car, profession, where they work, smokes, drinks, and hundreds of other spot data points about them, a two layer neural network would be able to pull it all in, and use historical data to train against later data, and use recent data to predict where the crimes are going to occur, and it will be eerily right, gathering information gain from what seems out of thin air.
I think its more likely that crime will be predicted by looking at actual behavior. Someone unidentified that is acting suspiciously in a place where no visitors are expected. That sort of detection is going to get automated and will become ubiquitous.
I'm going to make a prediction that this will get massive hype and pomp surrounding it, and three or four (or whatever) years from now when the first big result sets roll in, it'll be discovered that it turns out it's not much more (perhaps not at all more), effective than random patrols in bad areas.
Why? Because we live in a dynamic, non-fate based world. Crime is a choice, and cannot actually be predicted (because destiny is not set). I can walk up to the door of a convenience store with a gun, stop, think, and turn back. Thus random patrols in known bad neighborhoods is guaranteed over a large dataset to be as effective as 'predictive' crime technology.
Wow. You can always count on the internets to provide cheap philosophy.
You can predict a crime, just like you can't predict where a drop of rain will fall. But when the weatherman says "80% chance of rain in the north", I'll be sure to take an umbrella.
Why can't you predict crimes of passion? People with poor impulse control are easy to predict: they react violently or opportunistically to common situations.
I could see an algorithm come up with a lot of interesting correlations that make sense in hindsight but might not have been thought of ahead of time. For example, maybe a particular stretch of bars the weekend after payday are more likely to have confrontations just after closing time. Or maybe certain neighborhoods are more vulnerable to robberies during a specific holiday. Or maybe specific set of sports teams pitted against each other leads to conflict outside the game.
Using police to passively deter crime rather than punish it seems like a win-win.