Does Predictive Policing Work?

Posted: December 4th, 2016

By Robert Muggah

Robert Muggah is a political economist specializing in security and development. He co-founded and directs research at the Igarapé Institute, a think and do tank devoted to using new technologies to tackle challenges related to public security and drug policy in Latin America. He is also co-founder and director of the SecDev Group, a cyber analytics group, and oversees projects in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. In addition to advising United Nations agencies and the World Bank, Muggah is a fellow at the University of Oxford, the Graduate Institute in Geneva, and the University of San Diego. Muggah was named one of the top 100 most influential people working on violence and has given TED talks on fragile cities. His research, apps and data visualizations on homicide, arms, and cities have been featured by the BBC, CNN, FastCompany, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, New York Times, and Wired. Muggah is also affiliated with the World Economic Forum, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, the Know Violence in Childhood Initiative, and other international networks. He has authored and contributed to over two dozen books and earned his PhD at the University of Oxford.

What if it were possible to predict where a crime took place before it actually occurred – even determining the identity of the culprit in advance? Social scientists have long believed that historical crime trends influence future patterns. The revolution in advanced machine learning is putting these theories to the test. A new generation of forecasting tools is emerging that will dramatically change the nature of law enforcement – and our privacy – forever.

Predictive policing is one of the most widely known forecasting platforms. It is based on the expectation that crime is hyper-concentrated and contagious. Take the case of Chicago´s west side where over 40 percent of all firearm-related murders are committed by a tiny network made up of less than four percent of the neighborhood’s population. Some places and people in the west side are also predisposed to “repeat victimization” – they are more likely to be a victim of crime than others.

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