Tag Archives: crime prevention

New technology, seen here, is allowing police precincts to use computers in order to predict, where and when crime will occur in certain neighborhoods. The Santa Cruz police department recently invested in software that uses a complicated algorithm that has all the data of crime from the last eight years. This technology is able to pinpoint crime hotspots, since it also takes into account the time of year, the time of day and even the weather.  The program was created by a mathematician and an anthropologist (not a criminologist interestingly) and based it on earthquake shock waves. According to the article “A specific crime is broken down to the two most likely chunks of time it will probably occur, say noon to 1 p.m. or 4 to 5 p.m., so if an officer is working during that time, he or she knows to check that area” . This new piece of equipment may be very helpful for precincts that are strapped for cash and lacking policing staff. Apparently, the crime tracking data seems to be working and the algorithm has already correctly predicted 40 percent of crimes and had led to five arrests. Furthermore, Police said burglaries were down 27 percent in July compared to the same month last year. The technology also has led to officers questioning people merely for being in a hot spot. While I think this is a good idea, it definitely seems to have its flaws. No technology can truly predict what a person is going to do. I also would question if these statistics were manipulated to justify the cost of inputting the system.