Law Enforcement Wants To Try 'Predictive Policing' 377
Harperdog with this excerpt from a story about using statistics to fight crime:
"It’s great when cops catch criminals after they've done their dirty work. But what if police could stop a crime before it was even committed? Though that may sound like a fantasy straight from a Philip K. Dick novel, it's a goal police departments from Los Angeles to Memphis are actively pursuing with help from the Department of Justice and a handful of cutting-edge academics. It's called 'predictive policing.' The idea: Although no one can foresee individual crimes, it is possible to forecast patterns of where and when homes are likely to be burgled or cars stolen by analyzing truckloads of past crime reports and other data with sophisticated computer algorithms. 'We know where crime has occurred in the last month, but that doesn't mean it'll be there next month,' Los Angeles Police Department Lt. Sean Malinowski says. 'The only way for us to continue to have crime reduction is to start anticipating where crime is going to occur.'"
Re:They're spending a lot of money on this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Are they spending a lot of money for a fancy computer system that will tell them to watch out for crime in the crime ridden part of town?
While your comment makes a good sound bite, that's not the idea behind predictive analytics. You want to look for factors that can forecast a certain type of event or events before they occur. If you find the right ones you can take action to prevent undesirable outcomes.
For example, you could listen for the number, duration, and frequency of brakes being applied hard at intersections as a predictor of accidents. That would allow you to redesign the intersection to improve safety; even if no accidents have occurred.
This is not a new idea, but as computer power increases you can do more sophisticated modeling and analysis. In some ways, you are trying to do with machines what humans do instinctively - look for patterns that signify something is about to occur.
My CJ teacher (Score:5, Interesting)
My Criminal Justice teacher always taught this. The example that I remember from him was unmarked patrol cars.
When he was a captain in the local Sherrif Department he fought against using unmarked cars for patrol. His reasoning was that a visible patrol car detered criminal and traffic violations wherever it went. It also let the general public know that the police were in the area and there for you. And in case of an emergency a member of the public could quickly recognize a police vehicle to flag it down.
The only upside of the unmarked cars was that you could collect more ticket revenue easily. But ticket revenue was not the purpose of the department, so why should they give up ground in crime prevention for marginal gains in catching offenders unawares.
It boils down to the question, is it better to prevent a crime or catch the criminal after the fact?
Re:"Racial Profiling" (Score:5, Interesting)
Sounds like the new term for "Racial Profiling"...
So what's wrong with racial profiling if it accurately (e.g. passes statistical tests) for predicting crime rates in certain areas?
If a bunch of white males in suits drive into a neighborhood where that racial profile is uncommon, and the mortgage fraud rate goes up by a statistically significant amount, shouldn't that type of profiled activity cause increased fraud investigation in that area?
Simulation is expensive and difficult (Score:4, Interesting)
You want to look for factors that can forecast a certain type of event or events before they occur. If you find the right ones you can take action to prevent undesirable outcomes.
The problem is proving that it works. I used to do simulation of manufacturing systems for my day job about a decade ago. The problem with it was that if you build a good model which avoided a cost, only rarely could you actually prove that the money spent on the model was worthwhile. After all, if you never incur a cost (or a crime), how do you know what the ROI on the analytic model was? Very difficult to prove most of the time since you can't prove a negative. An organization like the FBI or maybe the NYPD *might* be able to justify it but most police organizations simply would not find the ROI to be acceptable.
That's not to say simulation modeling is a bad idea. It does work and can be very powerful. But it is VERY easy to misapply it even if the analytic models are correct and validated. It also tends to be extremely expensive hire the analysts and buy the software so you have to be sure the problem is of sufficient scale to justify the expense. Then of course there is the problem of actually building the model. There is a truism that "all models are wrong - some models are useful". Getting a useful model is not always an easy thing to do. A bad (very wrong) model can sometimes be worse than no model at all.
I generally tell people that if they can solve a problem without a complicated computer simulation, they should. Most uses I've seen for simulation are somewhat like duck hunting with a howitzer. For all but the most complicated and intractable problems with lots of variables and high risk of a negative outcome there is a strong chance that there are much simpler and cheaper solutions available.
Re:They're spending a lot of money on this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Most people are sick of home break ins, car thefts and even muggings as being treated like nothing by the police and the victims generally having no hope of seeing justice, if this study is positive sign of a true change of focus, then it is about time.
Denver had a pilot program funded by a DOJ grant to try applying more advanced forensics, mostly DNA, to home break-ins. The results were pretty amazing. Of course the police (and most of us I imagine) all believe that most of these crimes are committed by a few repeat offenders. Of course when a cop catches a burglar, he/she suspects that the criminal has probably gotten away with many crimes prior to being caught. But they really had no idea how concentrated it was until they started taking DNA from break-ins, and found that there fewer criminals committing more break-ins each than they ever suspected. And another nice thing is, it shifts from the criminal finally gets caught and gets convicted (or pleads out) to the one offense, servers a short sentence, and starts all over again to this: police match the DNA from prior crime scenes and the criminal gets charged with 10-20 felonies, and spends a couple of decades in prison.
Re:Problem with crime... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong
Capitalism is a flawed human system and american bullshit you've swalled is proof. I don't expect serious intellectual criticism of capitalism on slashdot because it is beyond the ken of most americans because they are indoctrinated since the day they were born.