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Science Technology

Crime Prediction 81

Posted by michael from the minority-report dept.
pipingguy writes "More than a decade of extensive crime data collection matched with new technology may soon allow police to predict to a surprising degree of accuracy the number and type of crimes that will occur in a given neighborhood one month in advance."
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Crime Prediction More

Crime Prediction

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  • I liked this better (Score:5, Funny)

    by recursiv ( 324497 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @02:58PM (#6125989) Homepage Journal
    When it was called Minority Report

    • Re:I liked this better (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Kyoya ( 152664 )
      I'm more afraid this will lead to another push to get profiling legitimized. Not even racially but by where you live within your city.

      Imagine handing a cop your license and having them come back to the car asking to search your car because you live in an area with a high drug problem rating. After finding nothing the officer would thank you and if suspicious enough may follow you for a little while 'just in case'.

      Granted the ability to stop some crimes before they happen would be of incredible benifit to

      • Re:I liked this better (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @04:36PM (#6126908)
        They aren't going to be able to stop crimes before they happen, because that's impossible (unless you count mitigating the factors that cause crime, like poverty or mental illness). If you stop it before it happens, then it hasn't happened.

        The only concern I have about this is that it will heighten the notions of where to send police in the first place. In Minneapolis we have a system called CODEFOR that is used to help police track crime and prioritize resources, but it's based (I believe) on reported crime. That's quite different than using statistical measures like arrest rates to project crime rates and send police into an area based on that. One has to be very careful, since using the results of this to direct limited police resources could influence the numbers that go into the model in the first place (feedback looping).

        Luckily, the people the article talks about were using a wide variety of inputs (not just police or crime-related) to what are likely a host of regression analyses.
        • "For instance, now," [the White Queen] went on, sticking a large piece of plaster on her finger as she spoke, "there's the King's Messenger. He's in prison now, being punished: and the trial doesn't even begin till next Wednesday: and of course the crime comes last of all."
          "Suppose he never commits the crime?" said Alice.
          "That would be all the better, wouldn't it?" the Queen said
          Lewis Carroll, Alice Through the Looking-Glass
        • > you count mitigating the factors that cause crime, like poverty or mental illness

          Oh... so... Mike Tyson or any other sports stars or movie stars (black or white) which commit crimes do it because they are poor? Or all those shootings among rappers.

          The problem with your thinking is that crimes aren't committed because people are poor. I came to the USA poor as dirt - with a LOT less money and worse situation than many people in "poor" neighbourhoods. Somehow, that didn't make me commit any crimes. Oh,

      • Re:I liked this better (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 4of12 ( 97621 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @04:47PM (#6127010) Homepage Journal

        The problem is not so much profiling as it is stopping short of full intelligent analysis of the profiling data.

        Coming to the conclusion that "black skin causes criminals" is as short sighted as coming to the conclusion that "nicotine stains between the fingers causes lung cancer".

        There are deeper root causes that people don't want to examine because it could upset their convenient view of the world and/or cost them time and money to solve properly.

        Unfortunately, it's politically convenient to sit patly on the shallow analysis and to offer similarly shallow solutions, like the heavy-handed approach you mention.

        It's the solution of bureaucracy: since 1% of the people do wrong, we'll impose an onerous burden on ten times as many people, and probably only be 30% successfully in stopping the 1% bad element.

        • full analysis? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by js7a ( 579872 ) *

          The problem [includes] stopping short of full intelligent analysis of the profiling data.

          True. Here in the U.S., the government doesn't publish jurisdictional correlations between crime victimization rates and economic numbers like residential and commercial real estate values, and total household employment (nonfarm and farm, payroll and self-employment.) Between those three values, there are three correlations, and six possible arrows of causation. Some of the data are recorded by census tract, and s

      • Granted the ability to stop some crimes before they happen would be of incredible benefit to society as whole.

        It's like doing unto others before they do unto you. Soon, even attempted attempted murder will become a crime.

        Then, since a neighborhood is considered a high crime area, the whole neighborhood will be placed under neighborhood arrest. The imprisoned area will become larger and larger until you'll need the assistance of one Snake Plissken to get out.
    • This isn't some science fantasy movie they're talking about implementing in the real world. They won't be able to tell you Joe Smith is going to kill his wife at 4:45PM.

      They're talking about profiling on a neighborhood scale. What they're suggesting is that if a man from a neighborhood that has a lot of crime is out and about they will watch him under the suspicion that he will commit a crime.

      • What they're suggesting is that if a man from a neighborhood that has a lot of crime is out and about they will watch him under the suspicion that he will commit a crime.

        Yes, you gotta love this logic. God forbid the man might be a victim. But no, to a cop everybody is guilty.

      • I agree. This is definitely worse. As I like to phrase, it doesn't give people "the chance to be innocent." Even if you've done nothing wrong, your profile might lead law enforcement to follow you. This in itself might not be inherently bad, but it skirts dangerously close. There would probably some level of temptation to put too much stock in the profiling info. In extreme cases, it wouldn't (but should) be surprising that a certain profile leads law enforcement to assume guilt on the part of the pro
        • Problem is it looks like the police will still be focusing on poorer neighborhoods which means that when the affluent decide to kill everyone will still get to be shocked. So at least they're not denying the media their circus with all of this.

          This could also reap benifits for the Patriot Act as well. So long as you assume that most muslim terrorists are living in the poorer sections of town.

  • And yet will stop none. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:01PM (#6126029) Homepage Journal
    Worthless if it doesn't help stop any.

    You've got to look at the cause not the effect to make a change. Minority Report just won't work. Normally you can guess these stats based on the demographics of the area as well.

    Live in the country? Then you're more likely to get broken into.
    Live in Compton? You're more likely to get shot in a drive-by.
    Live next to Barbara Streisand? You're more likely to get sued.

    The list goes on...

  • How much? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Poofat ( 675020 )
    How much did it cost them to predict that crime would happen in drug-infested poor neighborhoods?

    Sure, the study showed a little more than that, but you have to question the usefulness.
    • Thing is not eveeryone in a poor drug infested neighborhood is a criminal. Much like rich neighborhoods the ratio varies wildly as to the actual criminal population.

    • 1. Formulate predictable study
      2. Make stats fit predictions
      3. Profit!!!
    • True. As long as the data they collect doesn't tell you anything, then it is in fact useless. For example, we all know a really bad neighborhood in a city we live in, and it's clear a lot of crimes will happen there.

      But, on the other hand, there's got to be some subtlety to it. One thing which might be very useful is their being able to see trends, e.g. a neighborhood is going in a certain direction. It would be hard to tell that from just a sense that a neighborhood was bad.

      In analogy, noone would

  • Precrime department (Score:4, Interesting)

    by orangesquid ( 79734 ) <`orangesquid' `at' `yahoo.com'> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:13PM (#6126147) Homepage Journal
    Mr. Smith, you will commit a murder tomorrow morning at 2:34 PM. You will murder your wife. We are taking you into our custody now.

    But what about...
    Mr. Smith, you will break free from our custody tomorrow and attack a security guard in the process. Thus, we are taking you into our custody now.

    I like paradoxes, but not when they're amber.
    I like paradoxes, even though my name's not Bamber.
  • 83% of all statistics are made up on the spot. Corrolary: if it's accurate, it's coincidence.

  • computer predicts heinous crimes w/100% certainty: (Score:5, Funny)

    by presearch ( 214913 ) * on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:19PM (#6126212)

    The White House
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
    Washington, DC 20500

  • Not minority report (Score:5, Insightful)

    by moc.tfosorcimgllib ( 602636 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:22PM (#6126233) Journal
    Before everyone goes on a rant about how this is Minority Report or how it's useless to suggest crime happens in poor neighborhoods (duh!) remember what this tool will most likely be used for: placing officers where they will do the most good.
    It isn't a presumption of guilt, or arrest before a crime is attempted (minority report). This will be used to determine how many beat officers are needed to reduce crime in an area and if they are in fact reducing the amount of crime.


    Of course you can use statistics to prove anything, 75% of everyone knows that.
    • Crime doesn't always happen in poor neighborhoods though. A lot of crime is commited by the affluent as well.

      Yes it will be on officer placement but I'm willing to bet it will also influence officer behavior regarding residents of an area. I've lived in to many cities where racial profiling is practiced.

      In the article he makes mention of this not being based on race but then says well most poor people are non white. It smells like profiling take two to me.

      • It may help profiling a bit, though, because it will take focus off of the idea that "blacks and hispanic are more criminal" and instead point to "inner city areas are more criminal" which is ultimately more fair. I think it is much better to say "people from this area tend to do this or this" rather than "people of this ethnicity tend to do this or this." Of course, racists everywhere will surely find relationships between these crime statistics and the distribution of ethnicity and forget that correlati
      • Its really about income level ... the poor are more likely to commit violent/drug crimes, and the better to do are much more likely to commit financial crimes (fraud, imbezzlement etc).

        I would actually say that the level of criminality of the well to do is MUCH higher, but their damage isn't as noticeable--usually. However, think about Enron, Adelphia, Martha Stewart ...

    • No, most likely what will happen is they'll get data supporting the idea that neighborhoods consisting primarily of minorities have higher violent crime rates than other neighborhoods. Then they'll be accused of racial profiling. Bad cops (and unfortunately, probably some good cops, few though they may be) will have their lives ruined.

      • I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of my database.
        • This won't be about skin colour. They're as likely to target a white guy as a black as long as he comes from one of the problem areas I imagine. It's not racial profiling but economic in a sense.

          • The problem is, however, that geographic (and economic) profiling usually does correlate to racial profiling. Minorities are generally poorer and live in more economically depressed areas. Yes, Snoop-Dog lives in a nice house in a good (economically stimulated) neighborhood; and yes some white people live in bad (economically retarded) neighborhoods. But these are exceptions.

            • Yes, Snoop-Dog lives in a nice house in a good (economically stimulated) neighborhood; and yes some white people live in bad (economically retarded) neighborhoods. But these are exceptions.

              Some white people? Geez, where are you from? There are far more poor white people than poor black in USA.

              • Some white people? Geez, where are you from? There are far more poor white people than poor black in USA.

                If you're talking sheer numbers, then you are correct, but that's only because there are more white people than blacks total. However, from the March 2002 Current Population Survey [census.gov]:

                The poverty rate, which was 12 percent for the entire population, was 23 percent for Blacks and 8 percent for non-Hispanic Whites.

                Additionally,

                Among all children under age 18, the poverty rate was 16 percent, but it

            • Minorities are generally poorer and live in more economically depressed areas.

              Yo, Sparky, you just did a little racial profiling yourself...

  • Has anybody read Asimov's Foundation trilogy? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by J-Piddy ( 581018 ) <goethe202&yahoo,com> on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:22PM (#6126239)
    Does this sound to anyone else like the beginning of psychohistory?

    It's a neat idea, but it seems like the complex and chaotic nature of the neighborhood would preclude anyone from being able to draw any substantive conclusion. I mean, if we can't get the weather right within 80% more than 12 hours in advance, we should we be able to predict the behavior of humans, even in large groups?

    • Re:Has anybody read Asimov's Foundation trilogy? (Score:5, Funny)

      by L. VeGas ( 580015 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:44PM (#6126462) Homepage Journal
      Has anybody read Asimov's Foundation trilogy?

      I thought I felt a breeze. It must have the collective wind from 500,000 slashdotters raising their hands at the same time.
    • Actually, predicting large groups is relatively easy.

      Here in the US, for instance, the majority of folks from 20-65 that went to work today, will go to work tommorrow.

      Its simple percentages. Now, predicting that one individual will commit a certain crime tommorrow is much more difficult.

      What the article is aboutis predicting that high crime neighborhoods will have more crime. It seems pretty intuitive. And I guess that more than looking at the folks there in these neighborhoods, it'd do better to look
    • There's a new weather prediction program they're testing for Great Britian that is like twice as accurate as anything we're using the U.S. It uses raw thermal data from satellites, whereas traditional prediction is done with raw thermal data turned into a guess into how thick cloud cover is.

    • Chaos (Score:3, Insightful)

      by f97tosc ( 578893 )
      we can't get the weather right within 80% more than 12 hours in advance

      This is true, because as you point out weather is a chaotic system. But nevertheless, we can predict certain global outcomes like the annual rainfall in Sweden or the average summer temperature in LA with quite good accuracy.

      Similarly, we will probably never be able get the number of crimes within the next 12 hours right within 80%. But the number of crimes within the next month is another matter.

      And this can be quite useful in consi

  • Top Three, make that four (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Cowdog ( 154277 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:30PM (#6126323) Journal
    Easy. The top four, at least:

    1. Speeding
    2. Rolling stops
    3. Sodomy
    4. Jaywalking

    They're going to have to apply some scoring other than frequency to make this useful.

  • Potential for abuse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AEton ( 654737 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @03:34PM (#6126358)

    So, if I want to stage a robbery, now I should find out where the least likely spots are for said robbery, demographically (do they have to publicize the specific information they gather? Civil liberties advocates would probably push it)--and then commit crime where they expect it least. Such a system, if acted upon in the manner suggested, would allow an informed criminal (or gang of criminals!) to act with even less resistance than before. That's the major flaw with demographic information, of course; it only gives averages and likely outcomes. But "they" (local police forces who use this information) will have to be careful in how they use it, because an overreliance on statistics means that the outlier criminal could take away someone's life or property with little chance of being caught.

    • I think in those cases they're just allowing for some form of media showcase. I can't see any other reason to ignore the fact that a lot of criminals are fairly intelligent people. But then again they seem to be basing this on the factor of poor = criminal = violent thug = idiot. It's one of the reasons I think police are so baffled all the time. They assume all criminals are basically stupid thugs.

    • Quite right! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ayanami Rei ( 621112 )
      And just think, as criminals get more sophisticated, the models will begin to fail, and it's back to "zone coverage".

      I can imagine this getting into macrocycles as demand pushes more technology, which is then picked up on and counteracted by criminals "in the know".

      Right now, we're lucky that most criminals are not uber-hackers who can break into police databases to get datasets to run through the models they leeched off University FTP sites.

      But that's not to say that it couldn't be done by a third part.
      • Arms races, both literal and figurative, between cops and criminals are nothing new. You can never win, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't play the game.
    • I hereby coin the term:

      Heisenburglary
    • Ok, try it. I'm guessing the least like place for a robbery would be about 6 miles under the ocean (near the Mariana Trench [brinkster.com], but about 3/4 of a mile from the bottom). Now, remember, you can only rob people -- stealing stuff from buildings and vaults is called burglary. My next least-likely place would be in geostationary orbit around the moon. I'll pay your bail if you get caught.
      • "...geostationary orbit around the moon."

        Methinks that you mean selenostationary (sp?) orbit. In fact only the L1, L2, L4, and L5 points could be considered selenostationary due to the influnce of the earths much greater mass in the Earth/Luna system.
        • Cool, thanks. I found this neat paragraph: [cmu.edu]

          I'm not sure you can make such a strong statement about anything as messy as lunar orbits. In any case, even if you can, the result is a stable semimajor axis with constantly changing eccentricity, and sooner or later the eccentricity will rise far enough to bring the perilune into the surface. Time-reversing that orbit will get you back to the original and then off into another set of wanderings ending in a "thump". Lunar orbits intersect the surface at both
    • You make a good point, that sophisticated criminals can take advantage of this data and thus avoid the police coverage. On the other hand, this only applies to certain types of crimes and certain types of criminals.

      I imagine that very professional criminals can do as you've described, but this wouldn't apply to certain types of criminals. For example, "crimes of passion" or "of opportunity" are by their very nature unplanned. These clearly take place in certain areas because of some underlying causes,

    • Well, in NYC they have CompStat. First, they don't reveal the data. Secondly, they update the data and the action plan rather frequently.
    • So, if I want to stage a robbery, now I should find out where the least likely spots are for said robbery

      Least likely building to be burglarized: 60 Parkland Rd.

      You pack up your burglary tools and drive over to 60 Parkland Rd and discover it happens to be the police station.

      -
    • How often have you read about some felon who got caught because he committed a traffic infraction in front of a police officer? Or was rooting through garbage?

      The system catches crooks who are dumb, unlucky, sold out by partners, or just really blatant.

      The intersection of smart people with criminals is out stealing expensive art, or more likely wearing suits and committing white-collar crimes.
  • I have a hard time believing that they can predict the liklihood that there will be a mugging on a given block with more accuracy than the liklihood that it will rain on the same block.
  • this money would be better spent on social programs which could educate or reduce poverty... but it's so much more fun to just arrest people and put them to death, i guess.

  • And it is 100% accurate (Score:2, Insightful)

    by n9hmg ( 548792 )
    Isn't that right, Mr. Anderton?

  • Heisenburglary (Score:3, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @04:57PM (#6127082)
    "Heisenburglary"

    Does that mean if you are observing the crime, then you are committing it yourself?

    That word you coined does sound like something involving a McDonald's mascot.

  • I can predict crime too! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 05, 2003 @04:58PM (#6127095)
    I predict that in the next few moments, an incident of copyright infringement will occur.

    *waits*

    *click*

    *clickyclick*

    Looks like I was right.

    I also predict that a few marijuana-related laws will be broken this evening.

    Damn, I'm GOOD!

  • Prediction... (Score:3, Funny)

    by JDWTopGuy ( 209256 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:44PM (#6128197) Homepage Journal
    Preliminary data reveals that carjackings correlate to the number of copies of GTA that have been sold in the immediate area. From now on, your license will automatically be suspended when you buy GTA.

    Officials are also considering legislation to classify "The Sims" as an addictive substance.
  • When in doubt, predict that the trend will continue.
  • ... will cause the pattern to change. Then the trick will be to predict how the pattern will change when you act on your present information. Then you start acting to change the pattern to best match your resources ... and then a politician with a "cause" lobbies for action to increase the amount of crime he/she wants to be seen fighting ... and everyone makes lots of money ... and that's a good thing.
  • I would be very satisfied with simple software that watched trends of crime and allowed police to select areas where crimes are more likely so they can increase forces there.

    According to the article, they seem to be grasping at straws:

    With models similar to those used in macroeconomics to warn of recession or inflation, Gorr said researchers matched criminal reports, 911 calls on shots fired, and census data along with a mishmash of yellow page listings and seasonal variations to predict crime numbers.

  • "a surprising degree of accuracy"

    I don't quite call a 20 percent error area an accurate prediction... That's just luck :)

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