Predictive Policing Tech Fails in New Jersey

An analysis by The Markup has found that crime predictions generated for the police department in Plainfield, New Jersey, rarely lined up with reported crimes, adding further weight to the argument that predictive policing tech does not work, Aaron Sankin and Surya Mattu report.

The publication examined 23,631 predictions generated by Geolitica, whose software that ingests data from crime incident reports and produces daily predictions on where and when crimes are most likely to occur, between Feb. 25 to Dec. 18, 2018 for the Plainfield Police Department. The success rate was less than half a percent, with fewer than 100 of the predictions lining up with a crime in the predicted category. Looking at predictions specifically for robberies or aggravated assaults that were likely to occur in Plainfield, the success rate was 0.6 percent. The pattern was even worse when it came to burglary predictions, which had a success rate of 0.1 percent.