Predictive policing programs generally refer to the use of analytics, artificial intelligence, and other techniques to identify potential criminal activity by analyzing huge amounts of crime and other electronic data. Unfortunately, due to the secretive nature of the programs, departments and agencies that have implemented predictive policing programs have not often shared the types of information used to make those determinations. The question that arises then is whether such programs are even constitutionally legal.
The use of predictive policing in the United States has been controversial. Supporters of predictive policing contend it uses historical crime data to help predict crimes accurately and objectively. Critics of its use note that there is little transparency in the systems and that predictive policing could be used to confirm pre-existing racial biases. Despite those concerns, predictive policing has been implemented in more than a half-dozen states, including Arizona, Alabama, California, New York, Illinois, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Washington.
It is not clear when U.S. police departments began using predictive intelligence, but there is little discussion of the practice being implemented in the United States before 2010.
By 2013, predictive policing programs had been implemented and were using an algorithm supplied by a local college professor to analyze crime data to better allocate police resources. Around that time, the RAND Corporation produced a guide to help police departments with developing strategies to more effectively conduct investigations and prevent crime that discusses predictive policing. The guide states that such policing cannot actually predict crimes. It can only tell law enforcement which people have a higher risk of committing crimes and where those crimes might be committed.
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