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Pros And Cons Of Predictive Policing

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Predictive policing, is when information is gathered and applied to anticipate future crimes that specific people will commit, based on previous actions and offenses. The police use predictive policing the most. It is believed that they are preventing crimes based on statistics, rather than reacting and handling crimes that will happen. More and more questions are rising, on whether of not predictive policing is an invasion of privacy. Will predictive policing lead to something even more intrusive for the people of this country? The current status of predictive policing seems to be remaining as contentious. There are many positives that come with the technology and use of predictive policing. Police are preventing many crimes. The United …show more content…

At what point do the people determine if certain crimes will require intervention? Are these computer programs causing people to get into trouble before they even commit a crime, just because they are now likely to? People have been arrested when they were technically committing no crime, they were then later proven to have illegal substances on them. The only reason these women were found and arrested, was because the program determine they would be at the location where crime was predicted to be committed. This program does not seem to be completely legally sound. “Two women were taken into custody after they were discovered peering into cars in a downtown parking garage in Santa Cruz, Calif. One woman was found to have outstanding warrants; the other was carrying illegal drugs” (Goode). Crime tracking systems are not calibrated as much as manually put in information in the systems. Some of the programs are mostly only good for analyzing past information and patterns, rather than predicting future crimes.” In contrast, CompStat and other crime-tracking systems in use in many cities are calibrated less frequently, rely more on humans to recognize patterns, and allocate resources based on past crimes rather than predicted future offenses” (Goode). The programs have yet to even be completely proven, in terms of accuracy. These programs depend on the accuracy of the information that was put …show more content…

The positives for predictive policing seem to greatly outweigh the negatives. The police only appear to be slightly invasive, in terms of catching people committing crimes. These people are in places, at times of predicted crime rates. As for inaccuracy, the only part about predictive policing that is inaccurate, is the incorrect data. This incorrect data is only incorrect, because a person put the information into it, incorrectly. In terms of being racist against certain crimes, the computer programs are proven to be completely unbiased, because it is a computer program and not a person. There are many helpful positives that with research, has proven predictive policing is more then helpful to law enforcement. Many crime rates have gone down, without doing anything illegal. Many crimes have been caught before completely committed because of the program. No claims about racism or biased can be used against the program. Criminals have to be way more vigilant about committing crimes, because the police are able to be on the lookout in more places now. Predictive policing has and will continue to save this country money, which the United States needs, due to the economic state it is in now. There are negatives to anything if it is looked into far enough. In the case of Predictive policing, the negatives do not even slightly compare to the positives it has served and will continue

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