"Computer algorithms combine crime statistics and criminal behaviour models to produce ‘predictive areas’ where burglars and muggers are likely to target."
Officers are then deployed to those areas, which cover a radius of no more than 250 yards, to act as a deterrent or even catch the villain in the act."
Analysis suggests the computer algorithms are ‘seven times more accurate than chance’. A pilot scheme saw ‘significant reductions’ in burglaries in Hackney, Wandsworth, Newham and Lewisham."
MailOnline
7 comments:
Woo-hoo! Precrime!
Tom Cruise is on the job.
Seven times more accurate than chance - wow - what's seven times zero?
Now if only we could predict where the Hamburglar will strike next.
So the burglars see the cops just decided to go to church or get a job instead? I bet not. The cops shouldn't be hanging out deterring them, they should hide and catch the bastards.
Hey, what if hire burglars to catch other burglars? Pay them a bounty.
Milwaukee, at least parts of it, is beset with a Chicago-level rate of gun related homicides. Most of it is drug related, as you would guess.
The MPD had a contractor install sensors in various locations. The sensors could hear gunfire, triangulate it's location and rapidly send data to police deployed nearby waiting for just such information. A rapid police response, often within a few seconds, brought crime down. For a while....
The bad guys figured out how to defeat it. They'd send a kid to a different neighborhood to fire shots into the air. the police responded to that neighborhood, while the real crime was taking place somewhere else, often with knives and bats rather than guns.
The homicide rate keeps going up.
I don't know what seven times more accurate than chance might mean.
Chance would be zero bits of prior information.
Seven times more accurate would be zero bits of prior information, the same.
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