[jmnicolas]

"In Chicago, the police have developed a “heat list” of 400 people who are considered far more likely than the average person to be involved in violent crime. Factors in compiling that list included their criminal records, social circles and gang connections. Also a factor was whether they had been victims of an assault or a shooting."

Yeah and I'm sure that Chicago detectives had absolutely no clue about those 400 people, they really needed a piece of expensive software to tell them where to look for. The trend is to think that technology will solve all problems, but it's just wishful thinking imho.

[Baghard]

They probably needed the software for this indeed. My local police department did not even cooperate with other local police departments. Profiles and reports for a criminal vanished, once they settled somewhere else. That is just throwing information away. This problem still exists in Europe. A sex offender from Belgium can move to Germany and become a janitor at a school.

Software is expensive to develop, but once developed it is actually very cost-effective. It can be copied over to other departments at a fraction of the cost of a detective salary.

Software will continue to eat the world. Criminals use new technology to stay ahead of the police, so the police has to stay up-to-date too. Data mining software helps the police do their jobs more efficiently and honestly. Factors don't lie, machine learning actively combats bias. While human intuition can be flawed and biased.

There is a danger than humans grant too much authority to computer systems, but there is also an opportunity to remove or dampen cognitive bias.

[mentat]

Instead of protecting and helping victims, expect them to retaliate and be waiting when they do... Awesome.

[riskneural]

In the insurance industry, if you are the victim of a crash you may lose your no claims bonus. The situation is not just as simple as a victim of attack being a victim.

Wouldn't it be the case that, for example, those in the drug business are far more likely to harm their competition than their market?

[mentat]

For what types of attacks is it OK to "take away the no claims bonus" for fair and equal protection (and scrutiny) by the law?

[riskneural]

If the goal is to prospectively keep the peace, then the monitoring should be directed towards those most likely to break the peace. I think that is rather orthogonal to fair and equal protection.

[spacecowboy_lon]

Exactly and as having been in the wrong place at the wrong time this rankles and I did have at the time dissuade my one of my coworkers from "accidentally" putting the perp on the kiddie fiddlers regsister.

And the landlord of the pub where this happened was very lucky a few of the lads didn't go down and make our displeasure known.

[jMyles]

Are you a markov chain bot?

[AnimalMuppet]

Might be someone who's first language is not English.

[jMyles]

Perhaps. I just read it again, and I still can't put together the meaning, even trying to read less-than-literally. It reads just like a comment from SubredditSimulator.

[DanBC]

The comment is in reply to one talking about police monitoring the victims of crime who might be more likely to take revenge. The police then catch those victims (now perpetrators) of crime.

> Exactly and as having been in the wrong place at the wrong time this rankles and I did have at the time dissuade my one of my coworkers from "accidentally" putting the perp on the kiddie fiddlers regsister.

I've been a victim of crime - I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

It rankles - I wanted revenge.

At the time I dissuaded a colleague from deliberately putting the name perpetrator of the crime on the sex offender register.