[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.