Tech | August 22, 2010 | 2 comments

Thought Police: Software Predicts Criminal Behavior

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MorichesDaily
Program Helps Law Enforcement Determine Who Is Most Likely to Commit Crime

In the movie Minority Report set in the year 2054, an experimental Washington, D.C. police force called Precrime has completely neutralized murder in the city. Reality is scarier – new crime prediction software being rolled out in the nation’s capital that George Orwell’s Thought Police might have found useful: an artificial intelligence system designed to gain insight into what people are thinking.

Developed by Richard Berk, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, the software is already used in Baltimore and Philadelphia to predict which individuals on probation or parole are most likely to murder and to be murdered.

In his latest version, the one being implemented in D.C., Berk goes even further, identifying the individuals most likely to commit crimes other than murder.

Predicting future crimes does sound, well, futuristic, said Berk. Even his students at the University of Pennsylvania compare his research to the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report.”

Scientifically, Berk’s results are “very impressive,” said Shawn Bushway, a professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany who is familiar with Berk’s research.

Predicting rare events like murder, even among high-risk individuals, is extremely difficult, said Bushway, and Berk is doing a better job of it than anyone else.........

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