Minority Report preCog like software "sending the police before there’s a crime"

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/us/16police.html?_r=1

by rockarage • 15 years ago

64 24 15 years ago

pyre• 15 years ago

Deploying police to areas where crimes are statistically more likely to occur just seems like better allocation of resources, not necessarily 'pre-crime' or 'thought-crime.'

mattmanser• 15 years ago

Indeed, it actually sounds like what police work should be in the first place.

Road gets burgled ever week at the same time.

Perhaps we should stake it out?

Revolutionary, the police discover common sense!

archangel_one• 15 years ago

This kind of thing is often not as obvious as it sounds. I used to work for a company that did a similar trick for ambulances, and it was an amazing amount of work to try to persuade customers that this kind of statistical prediction could be useful.

Also, there are often other considerations; depressingly often there's political pressure, for example. One could easily imagine in this case that there might be pressure to show a stronger police presence in low-risk wealthy suburbs over the hot spots that might tend to be poorer.

sbov• 15 years ago

From reading the article it seems like it's potentially used to not do that:

“But I’m looking at a map from last week and the whole assumption is that next week is like last week. The computer eliminates the bias that people have.”

jmtulloss• 15 years ago

That oversimplifies it a bit I think. The road gets burgled at the same time every week, so the police then patrol that road and the road doesn't get burgled. Which road is getting burgled instead? That's where it's nice to have already run all the stats.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

yeah, but it is also racist/s

pavel_lishin• 15 years ago

If this were a Michael Bay film, this is merely Step 1 in an evil mastermind's plans.

Step 2 is to direct the police away from his crime scene;

Step 3 is to commit the crime.

Think Die Hard With A Vengeance meets Speed 2.

frisco• 15 years ago

You haven't seen Minority Report, have you? (nor looked it up, despite it clearly being referenced in the title of this post)

blake8086• 15 years ago

The interesting debate will occur when the police argue that statistics constitute "probable cause" for an otherwise unconstitutional search.

tptacek3• 15 years ago

Let's save that interesting debate for when it actually occurs. In this case, any attentive cop would have detained anyone doing what these people were doing. I'm pretty sure Forest Park, IL isn't deployed advanced probabilistic policing technology, but I've gotten pulled over and questioned for pulling my car out of a CTA lot at a weird time of day (turns out there was a catalytic converter theft ring).

dminor• 15 years ago

Well, this program is essentially spitting out probabilities, so I guess it's a question of how predictive it actually is and how probable "probable cause" needs to be.

Another question is: how will criminals respond if/when this becomes widespread?

eric-hu• 15 years ago

With this program, I could see people using the predictions to tell them where not to commit a crime.

Want to steal a car? Look for discrete areas that aren't flagged by this program.

I'm sure this system is under heavy lockdown, though, and would require up-to-date police information.

tptacek3• 15 years ago

Can someone fix the grotesquely editorialized title on this story? "PreCog"? The software picked a location to patrol. Locations don't have cognition.

The real title of this story is "Sending the Police Before There’s a Crime".

danilocampos• 15 years ago

> The software picked a location to patrol. Locations don't have cognition.

The software is being compared to Minority Report's precognitive mutants, who directed police forces to avert crimes before they happened.

tptacek3• 15 years ago

Based on what suspects were thinking; it's a dystopian fable. This is just good policework.

dools• 15 years ago

The article doesn't mention minority report anywhere. This is most definitely "editorialising in the link title" and should be changed to reflect only the title of the article it's referencing (alternatively, the OP could have blogged about it, discussed similarity to precognition in Minority Report, and then linked to their article).

techiferous• 15 years ago

> to avert crimes before they happened

Not only to avert the crimes, but to arrest and charge the person before they committed the crime.

hexis• 15 years ago

This isn't "pre-cognition" any more than when Wal-Mart's supply-chain management software is.

enjalot• 15 years ago

Walmart's supply-chain management software sounds like pre-cognition to me, at least in the sense that they are making some pretty good decisions about the future based on predictions.

It's just like artificial intelligence, once you get how it works it doesn't seem all that intelligent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect#AI_is_whatever_hasn.2...

tsellon• 15 years ago

I found this interesting: "Mr. Friend said the early indications were encouraging. Burglaries were down 27 percent in July compared with July 2010, suggesting that the targeted policing may have a deterrent effect, he said."

Rather than just catch criminals, it reduces the probability that a crime will be committed. The least expensive arrest is the one you don't have to make. Hope this pans out.

pmiller2• 15 years ago

People seem to be missing (or ignoring) the fact that this software doesn't direct police to arrest people before they've committed a crime. At worst, they end up questioning some people who wouldn't have otherwise been targeted, and those people might be arrested for some previous offense (such as a bench warrant). With that in mind, this is really nothing like Minority Report at all.

Minority Report preCog like software "sending the police before there’s a crime"

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