Software Program Maps Crime Before It Happens

[HardOCP News]

Police departments pay up to $150,00 a year for this stuff? You have to be kidding me.

They’re handed a marked-up map of their beat and told: Between calls, go to the little red boxes, each about half the size of a city block. The department’s crime analysts didn’t make these maps. They’re produced by PredPol, a “predictive policing” software program that shovels historical crime data through a proprietary algorithm and spits out the 10 to 20 spots most likely to see crime over the next shift.

 

[HardOCP News]

You'd have better luck making a program that, based on the frequency of past visits, could find out which donut shops cops are most likely to be at. Hey...there's an idea.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

It'd probably be cheaper to just ask Google to data mine peoples' brains, associate them with criminal activity, and then give the police realtime GPS locations they're already pulling from the Androids. It's not like they probably aren't already doing it and just haven't written an API to access it yet.

 

[the-one1]

 

[redrage]

or they could just look to the veterans of their department and say, "Hey where is the bad part of town?"

problem solved.. now give me 100k :-D

 

[Dekoth-E-]

Now this doesn't bother me as it isn't targeting people. While there is a good bit of snark already, I can see the value of something like this. When you are dealing with high crime area's, it is pretty reasonable to be able to predict patterns for example if crime in a certain area tends to happen more frequently during certain hours. It makes sense to direct police into those area's during those times as a deterrent. It certainly is a more valuable use of their time then them sitting on the side of the road setting up speed traps and other bullshit stuff that its only purpose is to fleece regular citizens.

 

[the-one1]

Now this doesn't bother me as it isn't targeting people. While there is a good bit of snark already, I can see the value of something like this. When you are dealing with high crime area's, it is pretty reasonable to be able to predict patterns for example if crime in a certain area tends to happen more frequently during certain hours. It makes sense to direct police into those area's during those times as a deterrent. It certainly is a more valuable use of their time then them sitting on the side of the road setting up speed traps and other bullshit stuff that its only purpose is to fleece regular citizens.

True, but how else are they going to make money?

 

[kbrickley]

"The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed—would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you." - George Orwell

Welcome to the future

 

[Parja]

Crime analytics. Seems kind of dumb they haven't been using something like this for years already.

 

[bloodypulp]

the police can say there's no racial bias when computers target certain neighborhoods. it's all based on statistical analysis..

 

[Twisted Kidney]

Average income per household in each neighbourhood will give you the answers.

Like, directly. Income per household is inversely proportional to crime rate in a given area.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Crime analytics. Seems kind of dumb they haven't been using something like this for years already.

They have, it just was done by people. You don't have a lot of cops patrolling tourist areas and transit systems in metropolitan cities because they want to see the sights too, they do it because certain crimes are more likely to happen there, and this is based on historical evidence that this happens.. This is simply an updated version of that, probably taking in even more data.

 

[Wierdo]

Average income per household in each neighbourhood will give you the answers.

Like, directly. Income per household is inversely proportional to crime rate in a given area.

Yep, high poverty equals more social instability, no surprise. Doesn't help that we got, for example, a ton of single mothers, many having to working two or three jobs to provide for the kids, leaving their upbringing to the street etc.

You can take a nation with less challenges relating to poverty and compare the results. Speaks for itself.

example:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime

Violent crime >
Murder rate: 554 vs 12,996
Murder rate per million people: 16.23 vs 42.01
Rapes per million people: 16.88 vs 274.04
Intentional homicide rate: 1.56 vs 4.7

etc.

 

[TwistedAegis]

Honestly, right around when this came out I was thinking of starting a company to do just this; then saw a few beat me to the punch.

Historical data, plus machine learning on how time of day, the weather (hotter weather = hotter tempers/crime?), holidays, etc etc, hell perhaps even geo-located Twitter accounts for mood analysis of the precinct's residents. There are a lot of options to do some interesting things...

 

[kbrickley]

Yep, high poverty equals more social instability, no surprise. Doesn't help that we got, for example, a ton of single mothers, many having to working two or three jobs to provide for the kids, leaving their upbringing to the street etc.

You can take a nation with less challenges relating to poverty and compare the results. Speaks for itself.

example:
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Canada/United-States/Crime

Violent crime >
Murder rate: 554 vs 12,996
Murder rate per million people: 16.23 vs 42.01
Rapes per million people: 16.88 vs 274.04
Intentional homicide rate: 1.56 vs 4.7

etc.

I think you have to be a little careful making direct country to country comparisons ... although the USA and Canada are both first world nations with equivalent land areas, we are very different in other ways ... our total population is 9 times that of Canada ... we have much larger urban centers (Canada's largest city is about 60% of the size of the USA's 3rd largest) ... we have different justice systems and most likely very different demographics ... it isn't a total Apples to Apples comparison ... that's not to say that the USA doesn't have issues but Canada may not be the case study in how to master them

 

[TwistedAegis]

I think you have to be a little careful making direct country to country comparisons ... although the USA and Canada are both first world nations with equivalent land areas, we are very different in other ways ... our total population is 9 times that of Canada ... we have much larger urban centers (Canada's largest city is about 60% of the size of the USA's 3rd largest) ... we have different justice systems and most likely very different demographics ... it isn't a total Apples to Apples comparison ... that's not to say that the USA doesn't have issues but Canada may not be the case study in how to master them

Agreed in part, but on the other hand that doesn't mean we can't analyze what they've done well and see if it can be applied here. America was founded on the ideals taken from several other societies; I dislike how often there is a knee-jerk reaction to not even attempt to learn from real-world examples of how other countries have solved problems simply because they "aren't America."

That isn't to say there aren't obvious differences or some reasons why some solutions wouldn't work; my issue is with those who refuse to even consider it in the first place.

 

[Retronym]

predict how many dog vets within a 2 mile radius of police stations go out of business

predict how many traffic stops occur within a 2 mile radius of payday loan locations

 

[Wierdo]

I think you have to be a little careful making direct country to country comparisons ... although the USA and Canada are both first world nations with equivalent land areas, we are very different in other ways ... our total population is 9 times that of Canada ... we have much larger urban centers (Canada's largest city is about 60% of the size of the USA's 3rd largest) ... we have different justice systems and most likely very different demographics ... it isn't a total Apples to Apples comparison ... that's not to say that the USA doesn't have issues but Canada may not be the case study in how to master them

It's not a 1-1 comparison, but it's one of the closest we can make:
- The figures include rates per million population, and most of Canada's population is centered around large cities.
- The two cultures share many similarities, they are one of the few nations connected directly to our borders, share the same language and are exposed to many similar entertainment and cultural programs compared to other nations.

That said, it's not a controlled lab experiment by any means, true. At the very least it's an interesting comparison.

 

[kbrickley]

Agreed in part, but on the other hand that doesn't mean we can't analyze what they've done well and see if it can be applied here. America was founded on the ideals taken from several other societies; I dislike how often there is a knee-jerk reaction to not even attempt to learn from real-world examples of how other countries have solved problems simply because they "aren't America."

That isn't to say there aren't obvious differences or some reasons why some solutions wouldn't work; my issue is with those who refuse to even consider it in the first place.

I am not saying we can't learn from other countries but we might want to consider countries with large amounts of immigration, diverse racial populations, extremely large and dense urban centers, etc ... I would think that the developing world (if there are any that are stable enough) would be the best case studies ... if anything it probably does highlight something that sociologists have been saying for a long time, that it is our dense urban centers and uneven distribution of jobs and incomes that create a lot of issues with crime ... and that isn't a simple fix

 

[Wierdo]

I am not saying we can't learn from other countries but we might want to consider countries with large amounts of immigration, diverse racial populations, extremely large and dense urban centers, etc ... I would think that the developing world (if there are any that are stable enough) would be the best case studies ... if anything it probably does highlight something that sociologists have been saying for a long time, that it is our dense urban centers and uneven distribution of jobs and incomes that create a lot of issues with crime ... and that isn't a simple fix

That's another thing about Canada that makes it interesting, it's also heavily populated by immigrants and has high racial diversity. Add to that their dense urban centers.

And average income levels as well as standards of living are similar to boot:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Standard_of_living)

It's hard to find a better comparison, even if not exact equivalents. Still useful imho.

 

[kbrickley]

That's another thing about Canada that makes it interesting, it's also heavily populated by immigrants and has high racial diversity. Add to that their dense urban centers.

And average income levels as well as standards of living are similar to boot:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Canadian_and_American_economies#Standard_of_living)

It's hard to find a better comparison, even if not exact equivalents. Still useful imho.

Perhaps you are right ... I was just considering that the largest Canadian city (Montreal) is only 5 million people ... the USA probably has around a dozen in that range (if you count metro areas) with our three largest cities in the 10 million plus range ... a city like New York is more comparable to a Tokyo, Mexico City, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro ... but you are right there might be some learning there ... I just don't consider 5 million that dense a population anymore when you compare to cities with 20 million, 30 million, or more

 

[Wierdo]

Perhaps you are right ... I was just considering that the largest Canadian city (Montreal) is only 5 million people ... the USA probably has around a dozen in that range (if you count metro areas) with our three largest cities in the 10 million plus range ... a city like New York is more comparable to a Tokyo, Mexico City, Beijing, Rio de Janeiro ... but you are right there might be some learning there ... I just don't consider 5 million that dense a population anymore when you compare to cities with 20 million, 30 million, or more

Sure 5 million is not as big as New York, the largest city in the US by far, but I don't think New York (8-10 million) should be compared to Tokyo (38 million), although the crime rates in Tokyo (murder per capita 1/12th of NY for example) are actually significantly lower lol.

Here's a list of the largest US cities, as you can see most of them are half the size of Montreal actually:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

 

[Wierdo]

Here's a list of the largest US cities, as you can see most of them are half the size of Montreal actually

edit: significantly under half.

 

[UrielDagda]

I swear I saw a movie about this..

 

[GaryJohnson]

Sure 5 million is not as big as New York, the largest city in the US by far, but I don't think New York (8-10 million) should be compared to Tokyo (38 million), although the crime rates in Tokyo (murder per capita 1/12th of NY for example) are actually significantly lower lol.

Here's a list of the largest US cities, as you can see most of them are half the size of Montreal actually:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population

Montreal is only ~1.6 million according to the interwebs if you're just counting those within the city limits. Toronto is actually larger.

You can't go by total population anyhow, population density is more relevant. The population density in Montreal is 1/7 of what is in New York City.

 

[Wierdo]

Montreal is only ~1.6 million according to the interwebs if you're just counting those within the city limits. Toronto is actually larger.

You can't go by total population anyhow, population density is more relevant. The population density in Montreal is 1/7 of what is in New York City.

That's true - I'm seeing 1/4.5 (http://versus.com/en/new-york-vs-montreal) - but the point is New York's neither comparable to the rest of the US's big cities, not is it comparable to Tokyo. Most of our largest cities are around the same class as Montreal and Toronto or much smaller.

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm

 

[Wierdo]

edit: nor*

 

[F.E.A.R.]

I swear I saw a movie about this..

I think it was "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise...

 

[Ducman69]

Average income per household in each neighbourhood will give you the answers.

Like, directly. Income per household is inversely proportional to crime rate in a given area.

Nope, culture matters. Chinese and Indian communities tend to cluster, and apples to apples, you see a noticeable difference in crime rates, the rates of single-mothers raising children, and average SAT scores of students compared to primarily black neighborhoods. Not too many Chinese, Indian, Paki, etc kids adopt the popularized "gangster" culture promoted in rap videos and the like, or get caught up in the same extreme level of violence as a reaction to any sign of disrespect.

And just as there is a huge disparity between violent crime in the sexes, with women being far less common aggressors, so too is there a noticeable racial gap among all income levels, with asians having by far the lowest crime rates. Culture, culture, culture.

That's another thing about Canada that makes it interesting, it's also heavily populated by immigrants and has high racial diversity. Add to that their dense urban centers.

And average income levels as well as standards of living are similar to boot:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compari...dard_of_living)

It's hard to find a better comparison, even if not exact equivalents. Still useful imho.

Look at your own link though, and then look at crime statistics in both countries:

In terms of racial disparity, United States African-Americans and Hispanics have a lower standard of living than the rest of the population; in Canada, Aboriginal peoples and Black Canadians are disproportionately likely to live in poverty, although these groups represent 25% of the US population and only 6% of Canada's.

Now what happens to the numbers if you were to more than quadruple the size of the segment of the Canadian population that is statistically more likely to be involved in crime? Would crime go up?

Not everyone is a statistic, of course, but the numbers are facts and they don't lie. That's the thing with statistics, is that they don't mean anything about an individual, but if the status show 30% of a group will be wearing a red shirt, if you have a group of a thousand people then sure enough I bet you're going to see damn close to 300 red shirts in the group.

But instead of saying "Gdamn, we have a serious cultural problem here", the discussing immediately devolves into "DATS RACIST" and the status quo is preserved for another day.

 

[Ducman69]

I think it was "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise...

Is that the one where Tom Cruise is a future cop with that scene where he stomps up and down on a couch after Oprah scored over 9000 on the e-meter during her personality test?

 

[Wierdo]

Nope, culture matters.
...
And just as there is a huge disparity between violent crime in the sexes, with women being far less common aggressors, so too is there a noticeable racial gap among all income levels, with asians having by far the lowest crime rates.
...
But instead of saying "Gdamn, we have a serious cultural problem here", the discussing immediately devolves into "DATS RACIST" and the status quo is preserved for another day.

Sure, I agree culture does play a big role. But that just supports the argument that poverty is tied to crime rates, those two are closely tied and constantly reinforce one another:

The groups in question experienced a different culture of discrimination in American society, they were not slaves that became free but left to fend for themselves in a culture of second class citizenship, is it a surprise that many people born in such conditions lose faith in the system? Basically yes I agree, culture->poverty->culture, a self feeding cycle.

The problem is how do you fix such a problem deeply rooted in American history and constantly fed by legal and social forces, making sure the fire burns from one generation to the next?

 

[4saken]

Sure, I agree culture does play a big role. But that just supports the argument that poverty is tied to crime rates, those two are closely tied and constantly reinforce one another:

The groups in question experienced a different culture of discrimination in American society, they were not slaves that became free but left to fend for themselves in a culture of second class citizenship, is it a surprise that many people born in such conditions lose faith in the system? Basically yes I agree, culture->poverty->culture, a self feeding cycle.

The problem is how do you fix such a problem deeply rooted in American history and constantly fed by legal and social forces, making sure the fire burns from one generation to the next?

Odd that every other group other than "blacks" have overcome the early hardships. Sense of entitlement and parental figures I would say is the issue. At this point its up to them to fix it. Not everyone else as they would like to think. You cant magically make stigmas go away, you have to grind them out little by little. Unfortunately its another 50 years to go for them even if they started today.

 

[Ducman69]

Sure, I agree culture does play a big role. But that just supports the argument that poverty is tied to crime rates, those two are closely tied and constantly reinforce one another:

The groups in question experienced a different culture of discrimination in American society, they were not slaves that became free but left to fend for themselves in a culture of second class citizenship, is it a surprise that many people born in such conditions lose faith in the system? Basically yes I agree, culture->poverty->culture, a self feeding cycle.

The problem is how do you fix such a problem deeply rooted in American history and constantly fed by legal and social forces, making sure the fire burns from one generation to the next?

A lot of whites were indentured servants (especially in Virginia and Maryland), which persisted in a different form even well after the end of slavery where a plantation owner would "sell" a home (more like a shed) and tools and allow him to work a piece of land, of which almost everything but the bare minimum to survive went towards the interest on the loan and the smallest profits went toward the general store also owned by the same individual with inflated prices, making it impossible to build up sufficient resources to move elsewhere or pay off the property generation after generation. Somehow they managed to move on.

Chinese immigrants were in similar situations, especially prevalent in the rail industry, where they were brought in because they would work faster for less than the freed black laborers, and Asian immigrants were a much smaller minority than the black population at any point in history. Somehow they managed to move on.

Especially in this day and age, there's no one specifically disproportionately forcing over 70% of black children to be born out of wedlock (for another smaller minority group, asians, its only 17%), glorifying a whorish club scene with obscene "twerking" to degrading music, looking up to idols that portray themselves as ignorant violent gangsters or hos that emphasis getting money above all else, and so forth. That's a choice that a large portion of the black community has made for themselves, and you can't blame whitey, asians, hispanics, or whatever for that. But, the game right now is playing the victim, so no one is allowed to talk about that self-created cultural problem, and black leadership stays silent towards the black on black violence and teen pregnancy and all the social problems, because the narrative is to play the oppressed victim and so only the far more rare cases of blacks being killed by non-blacks are worthy of attention to go pound the streets with signs and block traffic or worse, because only racism explains the death of a black person in any case of person-to-person violence... except when its black-to-black violence in which case ................. Time to take personal responsibility and reject that culture and not tolerate it in those around you, and tell the race-baiting Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons and the like to STFU, and move on, just like everyone else.

 

[Wierdo]

A nice little poverty experiment:

http://www.today.com/news/millionaire-uses-fortune-help-kids-struggling-town-1C9373666
http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/mill...nd-college-for-crime-filled-fla-neighborhood/

The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.

"We've given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We've given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing."

“When people have the resources to go and succeed, there’s a ripple effect,” said one high school senior who was part of the first pre-K class in the Tangelo Park Program. “It becomes generational. No one in my family ever went to college before, but now, my baby sister can’t even picture a life without college. My mother even went back and got her degree. I showed her that she could do it.”

 

[blackacidevil]

Perhaps you are right ... I was just considering that the largest Canadian city (Montreal) is only 5 million people ... *snip*

If you're getting info that states that Montreal is the largest city in Canada, then I have to question your source. Montreal hasn't been #1 in population since the late 1970's.

And Toronto is the 4th largest in North America. If you want to compare cities, then do Toronto to Chicago, since we just overtook them in rank. This is population of actual city, not surrounding metro area.

Toronto - 2.79 million
Chicago - 2.7 million.

 

[kbrickley]

If you're getting info that states that Montreal is the largest city in Canada, then I have to question your source. Montreal hasn't been #1 in population since the late 1970's.

And Toronto is the 4th largest in North America. If you want to compare cities, then do Toronto to Chicago, since we just overtook them in rank. This is population of actual city, not surrounding metro area.

Toronto - 2.79 million
Chicago - 2.7 million.

Except you can't just consider the formal cities ... you need to include the metro areas ... DFW and Phoenix with their metro areas are 70-80+ miles wide and since crime and other social factors don't stop at the arbitrary city border you need to consider the contiguous metro areas as one entity (for demographic purposes) ... by that standard the Chicago area is closer to 10 million ... LA in the area of 14-15 million or so ... and New York at around 20 million ... not sure what the largest Canadian metro area is but I suspect it isn't much more than 5 million ... the USA has around a dozen cities with metro areas in the 5 million range

 

[blackacidevil]

OK, in that case then we can effectively compare Toronto metro to Miami metro.

Greater Toronto Area = 6.05 million people in an area of 2750 sq miles (2200/sq.mile)
Miami Metropolitan = 5.56 million in an area of 6100 sq miles (890/sq.mile)

 

[_brew]

Crime analytics. Seems kind of dumb they haven't been using something like this for years already.

Police departments have been for decades.

GIS mapping and CompSTAT underpinned by a number of computational programs.
I'm not sure why this is news but probably because based on the rest of the responses in this thread people aren't really aware how advanced our policing has progressed in the past twenty years.