COMMENTARY: Pitfalls of predictive policing: Chicago police use of big data to prevent shootings isn't likely to have a major impact," by criminologist Jessica Saunders, published by USA News on October 7, 2016. (Jessica Saunders is a senior criminologist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation and an author of “Predictions put into practice: A quasi-experimental evaluation of Chicago’s predictive policing program,” published in September in The Journal of Experimental Criminology.)
GIST: "Consider it the real-life "Minority Report." Chicago police say they're successfully using big data to predict who will get shot – and who will do the shooting. But life is more complicated than the movies. The statistics that police tout to say the program works mask the fact that society is a long way from being able to prevent crime, even if police have a strong idea who might be involved.
Chicago police assert that three out of four
shooting victims in 2016 were on the department's secret "heat list" of
more than 1,000 people. And 80 percent of those arrested in connection
to shootings were on the list, they say, but there has been no
independent verification. Yet if that were the case, why is 2016 on
track to be the most violent year in Chicago's recorded history? This question was put to test in a recent RAND Corporation study of the Chicago program, and the results are not encouraging. No algorithm is likely to ever predict with absolute certainty the who-when-where of a
crime. But researchers have made great progress at identifying who is
at heightened risk for both criminal perpetration and victimization. By
calculating how often a person has been arrested with someone who later
became a homicide victim, Illinois Institute of Technology researchers
have identified a small group of people who are up to 500 times more
likely to be the victim of a gun-related homicide than the average
Chicago resident. Less is known about how to reduce gun violence for such a high-risk population. A 2009 study on gun violence in Chicago
found that a popular intervention that brings offenders to
"notification forums," which relay the enhanced punishment they will
receive if they commit a crime, can reduce reincarceration by as much as
30 percent. (While reducing reincarceration and preventing homicide are
two different things, this strategy is the closest to what Chicago is
proposing to do with their list. They propose to have the police deliver customized letters
to offenders containing their criminal history and the punishments they
will receive if they reoffend, along with contact information for
social services.)Given those developments, it was exciting to
have the opportunity to independently evaluate Chicago Police's
predictive policing program. To make a long story short: It didn't work. The Chicago Police identified 426 people as
being at the highest risk for gun violence, with the intention of
providing them with prevention services. In a city of over 2.7 million,
that's a manageable number of people to focus on. However, the Chicago
Police failed to provide any services or programming. Instead they
increased surveillance and arrests – moves that did not result in any
perceptible change in gun violence during the first year of the program,
according to the RAND study. The names of only three of the 405 homicide
victims murdered between March 2013 and March 2014 were on the Chicago
police's list, while 99 percent of the homicide victims were not. So
even if the police knew how to prevent these murders, only three people
would have been saved – and the other 402 would not have been. In a
recent news release, Chicago police dismissed the conclusions
of RAND's findings by saying the department has more than doubled the
predictive accuracy of its list and is going to start providing better
intervention programming. Even if those improvements are real, the drop
in crime will be almost imperceptible.......... For significant drops in citywide homicide
rates, monumental – not incremental – improvements in predictive
policing are needed. Preventing even one killing is laudable. But
neither the police nor the public should expect predictive policing
alone to have a major impact on overall homicide rates anytime soon.
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2016-10-07/chicagos-predictive-policing-program-isnt-a-cure-all-for-violent-crime
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/
