[HunchLab] Predicting Crime in Miami

[Patrick Connolly]

I was at the international open data conference a few weeks ago, and caught
something similar coming out of Edmonton, AB, Canada. They basically feed a
bunch of data sets into the system, and over the course of a few days, a
"rule inducer" generates a bunch of interesting geographic rules that
correllate with certain types of crime. Then the city tries to make sense
of the complex rules and tease apart correlation and causation.

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/City+harnesses+data+understand+crime/10716439/story.html

Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 13:30:55 -0700
> From: Razer <Rayzer at riseup.net>
> To: cypherpunks at cpunks.org
> Subject: Re: [HunchLab] Predicting Crime in Miami
> Message-ID: <558B137F.8060809 at riseup.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
>
>
> On 06/24/2015 09:31 AM, Tim Beelen wrote:
> > This is how it's pitched to the community:
> >>
> http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article19256145.html
> >>
> >
> > FTA: The Miami police currently is using COMPSTAT, which does not
> > predict where crime will happen insofar it tells you where it has been
> > taking place. In addition they will start using HunchLab at some point.
> >
>
>
> Locally, the police department decided to partner with PredPol
> /(snigger: 'Server And Protect')/. Early one morning at Starbucks I saw
> a shift captain who also did PD PR work on the phone discussing an
> article that was about to appear regarding the topic in a local
> newspaper. He emphatically and repeatedly said:
>
> "DO NOT call it 'Predictive Policing'!"
>
> He obviously didn't believe it was a correct phrase to describe "Guessing".
>
> RR
>
> Ps. The use of computers to resolve cold-cases mentioned below isn't
> really relevant to the topic of computers allegedly predicting future
> crime. ALso, I suspect predictive software will simply create better
> opportunities for more convincing false flag operations by people
> affiliated with (but perhaps not directly connected to) police agencies.
>
> I'd extrapolate on those operations (at least ones noted locally) but
> [off-topic], so I decline.
>
>
> > An associate professor from Florida International University, Rob T.
> > Guerette is expected to become their local expert on this piece of
> > software. The person who wrote the grant for it is Lt. Sean MacDonald.
> >> http://cj.fiu.edu/people/faculty/rob-guerette/
> >
> > The article claims that similar software has "... helped prevent and
> > stop property crimes, and is now being tested on gun crimes."
> >
> > Which makes me curious as about the kind of heuristics that they are
> > using.
> >
> > HunchLab apparently produces maps showing small areas where specific
> > crimes are likely to be committed.
> >
> > This is not a new turn of events, as Miami-Dade’s robbery division
> > uses IBM's Blue PALMS to solve cold cases. The software connects to a
> > database of every crime ever documented by Miami-Dade police.
> > Detectives enter the details of an unsolved crime and the program
> > produces a list of 20 suspects.
> >
> > Now the part of the Nuevo Herald's article that cough my attention is
> > the moment that it starts speculating about it's effectiveness.
> > The last few sentences juxtapose the potential volatility of it's
> > predictions with who is responsible for it's "effectiveness".
> >
> > HunchLab uses a wider dataset than the rough equivalent PredPol.
> > Annotated with the official final statement that the tool will only be
> > "...as good as the officers using it."
> >
> > Putting the burden of proof of it's effectiveness squarely on the
> > shoulders of the officers forced to use it. Which is, in my opinion,
> > ridiculous. Since the software is supposed to predict the crime and
> > not the other way around.
> >
> > I highly suspect that it grabs a bunch of data, normalizes it for the
> > use with a map and starts looking for some correlation coefficient and
> > then looks if it's statistically significant. I.e. it's a null
> > hypothesis-- exactly what Larry Samuels, CEO of PredPol tries to warn
> > them about expecting weird results. Since that is exactly what you get
> > when you grow your dataset and statistically analyze the date using
> > correlation coefficients + phi.
> >
> > Anyway. Who build this software? And what does it do?
> >
>
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