Author: Daniel Munro
Publisher: Maclean’s
Publication Year: 2017
Summary: The following article discusses how police agencies are using data collection techniques to perform “predictive” policing to determine where crimes are more likely to happen in the future and by whom. However, there is a major ethical concern revolving around individual privacy. There have been instances of models predicting higher crime risk in neighborhoods with a higher proportion of minorities, not because crime rates are higher in these areas, but because the models are creating bias. One example is a predictive policing model that selected neighborhoods with higher African American and Latino populations even though the “actual prevalence drug-related offenses” is essentially the same across all neighboring areas.
