Feeding the Machine: Policing, Crime Data, & Algorithms

Abstract

Discussions of predictive algorithms used by the police tend to assume the police are merely end users of big data. Accordingly, police departments are consumers and clients of big data -- not much different than users of Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, or Facebook. Yet this assumption about big data policing contains a flaw. Police are not simply end users of big data. They generate the information that big data programs rely upon. This essay explains why predictive policing programs can’t be fully understood without an acknowledgment of the role police have in creating its inputs. Their choices, priorities, and even omissions become the inputs algorithms use to forecast crime. The filtered nature of crime data matters because these programs promise cutting edge results, but may deliver analyses with hidden limitations.

Keywords: police, policing, Fourth Amendment, big data, predictive policing, algorithm, crime data, criminal justice

JEL Classification: K14