“It’s not how many people you catch, it’s how many crimes you prevent”
-Chief Charlie Beck
Sure there may not be medals for it, but having a “No crimes in my area” sticker on your car is so much better than having one that says, “Two rapists caught, one murderer close to arrest, a dozen pickpockets put behind bars”, isn’t it?
The reaction based nature of our law enforcement services is so normalised, we don’t even stop to think if there’s a better alternative available. It’s so easy to crib about the tardiness of police around us, to call it an evil, that we’ve never stopped to ask: Is it a necessary evil? What if, instead of being reactive, our forces were proactive?
We all know crime exists. That’s kind of a package deal with being a human. We’ve accepted that fact and moved on. But we also know that too much crime exists. Why in the world are we okay with that?
“Something needs to be done”.
You were waiting for this sentence, weren’t you? Here it is, and no the article isn’t going to end here. Something needs to be done.
Enter, predictive policing.
It’s very simple. Predictive policing is basically having the police force use the massive amount of data already available, combine it with different analytical techniques, draw insights from it and predict where and when crimes can happen. This gives them ample time to prevent them. It’s slightly more complicated than that, but you get the gist.
Proactive law enforcement, instead of reactive.
And it’s not a very alien concept, someone trying to predict the future. We, as humans, are obsessed with it. That’s why oracles, fortune tellers etc are so prevalent in our culture. More importantly, it’s being done on a technological front frequently. Most big companies use data science and analytics to decide where their production houses should be, what type of product would generate the highest amount of money; banks map out where they should invest, even we invest only where the predicted interest rates are higher. Even media houses and social media corporations can predict, and thus control, our reactions to various news and information pieces.
So why can’t our police forces do the same for prevention of crime?
Turns out they can, and do. The majority of examples come from USA:
“Regression models in Pittsburgh: Researchers used reports from Pittsburgh Bureau of Police about violent crimes and “leading indicator” crimes, crimes that were relatively minor but which could be a sign of potential future violent offences.
Near-repeat & hot spot analysis used by Santa Cruz Police Department: Uses PredPol software that applies the Mohler’s algorithm to a database with five years’ worth of crime data to assess the likelihood of future crime occurring in the geographic areas within the city.” – Rohan George (cis-india.org).
In fact, India too has dipped her toes in these waters. In 2015, the Delhi Police had publicly declared their intention to use CMAPS (Crime Mapping, Analytics and Predictive System) in order to identify criminal hotspots. Other states such as Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan have also come to utilise this technology, especially for facial recognition. A few states such as Madhya Pradesh have intentions of rehabilitating criminals.
While great, these ventures are too few and far between. With the amount of pure evil we’ve been seeing regularly around us, and the drastic increase in crimes as of late, data analytics could be a huge help for our law enforcement forces.
Andrew Mcafee said, “The world is one big data problem.” The problems we see around us are included in that list. So why not use data to solve them too? Many of the to-be criminals could be caught with just their search history as evidence.
Predictive Policing, however, has a downside too. Concerns related to privacy rights of the public need to be addressed before it can be put into use. It can be used as a discriminatory tool, targeting specific communities or groups. Protesters etc may be identified as future offenders, since protests would become data points for reference.
These faults are correctable though. They lie within the realm of problematic societal norms and human prejudices, and can be solved; both for a reactive police force, and the betterment of our society as a whole.