TechScape: can AI really predict crime?
Up for discussion in this week's newsletter: Years after shuttering a similarly controversial scheme, the LAPD wants to use tech to profile potential felons
In 2011, the Los Angeles police department rolled out a novel approach to policing called Operation Laser. Laser - which stood for Los Angeles Strategic Extraction and Restoration - was the first predictive policing programme of its kind in the US, allowing the LAPD to use historical data to predict with laser precision (hence the name) where future crimes might be committed and who might commit them.
But it was all but precise. The programme used historical crime data like arrests, calls for service, field interview cards - which police filled out with identifying information every time they stopped someone regardless of the reason - and more to map out problem areas" for officers to focus their efforts on or assign criminal risk scores to individuals. Information collected during these policing efforts was fed into computer software that further helped automate the department's crime-prediction efforts. The picture of crime that the software presented, activist groups like the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition argue, simply validated existing policing patterns and decisions, inherently criminalising locations and people based on a controversial hypothesis (ie, that where crimes have once occurred they will occur again). The data the LAPD used to predict the future was rife with bias, leading to the over-policing and disproportionate targeting of Black and brown communities - often the same ones they had been targeting for years, experts argue.
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