Predictive policing” is a crime-fighting tactic that several police departments across the country are utilizing to curb crime rates and save scarce resources. The term is relatively new, and refers to a method in which weekly reports of criminal activities are submitted by police officers to programmers who use a computer program called CompStat to enter data on crimes, including type and location. CompStat generates a
report of the city showing where the hot spots are, and after a review and analysis of the information, use the findings to predict in which areas crimes will be committed and thus focus on those areas to stop crimes from happening. Accordingly, both high ranking police officials and patrol officers are held accountable if the crime rate fails to drop in the targeted area.
CompStat is the shortened name for Computer statistics or Comparative Statistics A prototype of CompStat was created by a Brooklyn Transit Officer Jack Maple who stuck pins in a map to track crime. This crude method of tracking was credited with reducing subway crime by 27%. In 1994, after William J. Bratten was appointed police Commissioner, he took Maple’s tracking system into the computer age, resulting in a 60% drop in crime. Bratten, when he was the Los Angeles Police Chief and Lt. Sean Malinowski , who served under him, promoted the idea of predictive policing to other police departments in such cities as Philadelphia, Austin, San Juan, San Francisco, Baltimore and Vancouver, Canada. Malinowski is credited as being one of the people who came up with the term “predictive policing.”
Although it might seem obvious that if one neighborhood has a high rate of car thefts over a long period of time, cars will continue to be stolen in that same neighborhood, questioning the need for a computer to analyze the information. Predictive policing allows police to see developing patterns and are also make connections between crime and other issues. Arlington, Texas police were able to link a rise in burglaries in one area to the increase in housing code violations in that same area, concluding that when housing code violations increased, and the area deteriorated, burglaries also rose. Similarly, Minneapolis police used Predictive Policing to try to predict which restaurant would be the next target in a series of fast food robberies.
CompStat also may show a police department that certain public safety policies might have an opposite effect. A highly lit area thwarts crime, right? Not necessarily, claims P. Jeffery Brantingham, a researcher at UCLA, after analyzing CompStat data. Brantingham concludes that muggers like highly lit areas because they can get a better view of whom to mug, and who might not be worth the trouble. Bratingham believes that predictive policing can reduce burglaries by 15%. And if used to deter just one gang murder in L.A. it would not only save a life, but also save the city $1million in police and court costs, the price taxpayers pay for each homicide.
There are those who scoff at predictive policing, including “old-school” police officers who believe that a good cop on the street is superior to a computer. Another concern is that a large presence of police converging on certain neighborhoods (after CompStat data showed that crime was rising in the area) would cause hostility among the residents. Police Chief Tom Casady of Linconl, Nebraska spoke against predictive policing in a recent interview with Geography & Public Safety. Casady stated, “Allocating law enforcement resources predicted to have increasing crime and disorder is filled with ethical trapdoors.” He went on to say, “Intensive policing of the activities of young men in poor neighborhoods is a recipe for deteriorating relations between police and the community,…accusations of racial profiling, and a threat to police legitimacy. Lt. Malinowski hopes to avoid this problem by recruiting civil activists to work with him and the L.A. police force. Detractors also fear that police officers might not report crimes in their district to make it look as if crime has been reduced in their area.
Malinowski is waiting for a $3 million grant from the Department of Justice to set up an experiment to see if predictive policing works. If it doesn’t, then other methods of effective policing must be explored. If it does, than computer technology and CompStat will play a major role in police departments throughout the U.S.
Predictive policing is a new idea, but predictive analysis isn’t. Businesses have been analyzing data derived from consumers of their products in areas such as product development or to discover what other products customers buy along with theirs. Walmart even analyzed what consumers purchased in advance of pending hurricanes. The result: duct tape, bottled water, and strawberry Pop- Tarts!
Source: Miller-McCune July/August 2011
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