Pre-Crime Click - Short Edition

That is it from me. Kate will be here at 10.00, but first of all it

is time for Click. We are now more surveilled

than we have ever been. Authorities are gathering

data on its citizens. It would be all too easy

to confuse the real world Mr Marks, my mandate of the District

of Columbia Pre-Crime Division. I'm placing you under arrest

for the future murder of Sarah Marks and Donald Dubin,

that was due to take place today, April 22,

at 0800 hrs and four minutes. In the movie Minority Report,

the Pre-crimes Unit race to arrest would-be offenders before

they have a chance to Now, they use psychics but it turns

out, something similar In Chicago, where the violent

crime rate has exploded, law enforcement has been forced

to try out unconventional Authorities are attempting

to combine various technologies in an effort to predict

where and when violent Marc Cieslak went to

Chicago to find out more. Violent crime in Chicago has seen

a dramatic increase. RADIO: A 15-year-old

male, shot in the neck. We need a wagon

with a body bag also. The drug industry is what helps

them fuel the violence, by being able to pay

for their activity. In 2016, 726 murders were committed

in the city, a 19-year high. That's more than the number

of murders committed in New York Chicago is a city most famously

known as the Windy City. More recently, it has earned

a nickname that few residents That's because gun crime

is so extreme in some neighbourhoods, they are comparing

them to war zones. The issue has received increasingly

negative attention in the US, with President Trump tweeting,

"If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible carnage going on,

I will send in the Feds". The response from Chicago's Police

Department is a new initiative, driven by technology,

which aims to predict where crimes The University of Chicago's Urban

Labs are assisting the police in its efforts to integrate this

technology into its operations. We have a lot of expertise

in analysing crime patterns and trends in the city,

from years of working with data And so we are leveraging that

expertise to really help the Police Department think

about where it should be allocating its resources

to be most effective. So what kind of data or information

is it that the police are providing We have a number of datasets

that we work with from them, including data on crime patterns,

actual crime incidents, A number of different methods

of analysis are used, including machine learning

and predictive analytics. This is software which takes large

volumes of data and tries These trends can then help predict

where a crime might occur next. This is a heat map of

homicides in District 7. And we are looking at this year over

year, from 2011 to 2016. And basically, what you see

on the map is the darker the red, the more concentrated homicides

were in a given area. What sort of factors are you finding

are influencing crime in these Yeah, so, most of the prediction

that we're doing is space-based. So, yeah, it's locations

that are nearby that are high-risk locations,

like a 24-hour liquor store, a gas station,

where people tend to congregate. The weather seems to be playing

a very big role in the data. You know, we've just had a beautiful

weekend and we just had significantly worse amount

of shootings than we had The police are using these

predictive tools to inform the deployment of officers

and resources to areas where they think crimes

are likely to occur. Neighbourhoods in Chicago's West

and South Side are some It is these neighbourhoods

which have been chosen to test We are just driving

through Chicago's South Side now. Now, this is one of the areas

which has experienced the highest incidence of violent crime,

mainly gun and drug related. To see how all of this

different kit works, I'm on my way to a police station

which acts as a command centre, bringing all

of the technologies together. Heading up the project

is Deputy Chief Jonathan Lewen So this is our Strategic

Decision Support Center. So this is where you bring

all of your different This is the first time

that this level of technology integration has been done,

not only here, I think, So what can we see on the screens

we have got around us? So, all around us are various sensor

inputs, cameras, gunshot detection. The screen behind you is

something called Hunch Lab, which is a geographic prediction

tool that brings a lot of data into a model to predict risk

for future violence. So what you are seeing on these

little boxes here are areas where the model is recommending

that we deploy resources and implement strategies to fight

some of the violence And then it is telling us

that we should deploy resources, visit businesses, do foot

patrol, various tactics. Shot Spotter just very quickly

triangulates possible gunshot events using acoustic sensors that

are located throughout the district, and it shows the officer exactly

where, accurate to within 25 yards, And you can actually play the audio

of the gunshot event, So here's an event

with nine rounds fired. And in this case, you can see

the location is actually the back yard of a house,

so that's going to be very accurate. So this is the decision support

system, and this is where everything It will soon be available in the

hands of officers on smartphones. So in this case, we are looking

at a 911 call of a robbery that just There are four cameras within a 300

foot radius of that call. Here is the real-time

video from those cameras. These guys here, these

are possible suspects, or... These are people that might

possibly be involved? How do we know that this

is identifying the right people? We find when we test and measure

them, that the model's recommendations, because we can

backdate it, we can look at a known outcome period

and see how it performs. And we know that it's picking

the right people because we know But some of this technology

is proving to be controversial, It's called the Strategic

Subjects List. and locations, this list

is concerned with predicting crimes Just like Hunch Lab is a place-based

risk model, this is a person-based risk model that is looking

at variables such as arrest activity, so have you been arrested

for a gun offence in the past? So it's using some

crime victim data. Is your trend line in criminal

activity increasing or decreasing? What was your age at the time

you were last arrested? Nothing about race,

nothing about gender, It is using objective

measures to determine risk It's basically telling us that this

person is 500 times more likely than a member of the general

population to be involved in a shooting, either

as a victim or an offender. So in here, we can see his

affiliations, his gang affiliations. We can see also his,

is this his arrest record You can see that he has

a weapons arrest. He was arrested here

for aggravated battery. So here's a first-degree

murder charge. Here's another arrest,

this is a narcotics arrest. So the score estimates how much more

likely an individual is to be the victim or the perpetrator

of a violent crime. The police use this score

to inform what they call This is not designed

to be a punitive tool. This is used to drive what we call

a custom notification process, which is literally a site visit

to this subject, to say, "You've come to our attention

for these reasons. We want to get you out

of the cycle of violence. We can offer you the

following social services". Maybe if they have children at home,

it would be childcare services. "But also, if you don't leave

the cycle of violence and you keep committing crimes,

you're going to be subject to enhanced criminal penalties",

because you're a repeat gun And can you see why,

if police officers go and visit somebody out of the blue,

it might seem like they are being Everybody who has a risk score has

committed a crime in the past. Otherwise they wouldn't

even be in the model. Groups like the American Civil

Liberties Union, though, disagree. They aren't happy about the use

of some of these technologies. The police showed us a database

of people who have been involved in violent crime in the past,

and an algorithm which suggests if and when they might again be

involved in a violent crime. Oftentimes in large numbers,

along with a number But what they won't say is

what social services are offering. Is it just them or is it

their entire family? What is the success

rate once that occurs? The fact is, is that most

of the people who are charged for... You know, if you take two

people who are arrested for a simple drug possession,

if one is white and one is African-American,

the African-American is far more likely to be charged,

maybe even convicted. We have seen that there has been,

you know, in essence, a "once convicted, always guilty"

sort of theme that While there might be disagreements

about the use of this technology, everybody I spoke to had similar

ideas about an ultimate solution to tackling

violent crime in Chicago. It's got to be every,

everybody that's a stakeholder in this coming together

to solve the problem. What is really needed across this

city is a commitment I think a lot of it has to do

with preventing, with healing, and creating a space

where individuals can civically And that's it for the short cut

of this week's Click. The full-length version has

a really fascinating story about a bunch of geeks trekking

across the Arctic for charity. If you'd like to watch that, check

out Click on the iPlayer right now. Follow us on Twitter at BBC Click

throughout the week. Thanks for watching

and we'll see you soon.