The Smart Way to Fight Crime - Machine Intelligence Forecasting
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“The Art of Empowering your Workforce” LE Mentoring Solutions THE SMART WAY TO FIGHT CRIME - MACHINE INTELLIGENCE FORECASTING The criminal justice system is increasingly using machine intelligence in forecasting crime trends. Specialized computer analysis is assisting law enforcement agencies, the court system and parole boards in making critical decisions regarding public safety. Such as: Granting parole to an incarcerated individual Establishing conditions for parole Recommendations for bail Sentencing recommendations Where to expect crime to occur When to expect crime to occur What kind of crime to expect Risk assessment is now performed by extensive databases that have proven accurate in the application of parameters to determine guidelines for arrest, sentencing and release of criminal offenders. What does this mean for human analysts? Will they become obsolete, replaced by data entry clerks and teams of criminal justice decision makers who make a final determination based on a computer model? The digital age of crime forecasting is now a part of society’s daily policing operations. Using predictive policing policies is nothing new. What’s new is the equipment and software. Methodology for predicting crime activity can range from simplistic to complex. Sophisticated computer software tools have proven to be as accurate as a well-trained human analyst. There are two questions then, for law enforcement to answer in determining which crime mapper they opt for: 1. Which is more cost effective? 2. Which can deliver accurate results more quickly? Small communities may have a police department that is operating on what many would call a shoestring budget. Crime may be minimal. The community may be small enough that officers are very familiar with who everyone is and what everyone is doing. In a situation such as this, it may be more cost effective to have a human analyst on the job rather than invest in the expense of commercial crime forecasting software. The Sage Group CONFIDENTIAL Predictive Policing/Crime Analysis 5115 Maryland Way-Suite 204 Prepared By: Phil Costanzo Law Enforcement Mentoring Solutions Brentwood, TN 37027 917-281-5651 [email protected] “The Art of Empowering your Workforce” LE Mentoring Solutions Police departments managing large, densely populated cities, or even a sprawling, rural area with a population spread out and difficult to track, can benefit from the use of machine-based crime forecasting tools. These systems involve several different components that work together to create a complete picture of a crime forecast much like a meteorologist’s radar and satellite images work together to create a complete picture of a local region’s weather forecast for the following week. Geographic Information System (GIS) Crime events are coded geographically according to census tracts, blocks or grid cells. SQL Compatible Database This tool gathers, stores and manages data that is collected from other databases. It is a data importing tool. It is useful in that it can be set up to automatically transfer data according to specified parameters. By automating analyzing tasks that would otherwise have to be done manually, data collection is faster and more accurate. It is a tremendous time saver. Statistical Software Once all the data has been retrieved, it must be interpreted and translated into a format that is easy to understand and put to practical use. The criminal justice system loves statistics. Percentages are easy to understand. Looking at a map and seeing a geographical tag for a neighborhood with a note that this particular area is where ninety percent of burglaries are occurring is exactly the kind of information law enforcement needs to do the best job possible of protecting citizens and making cities safer by reducing crime. Crime mapping helps law enforcement prevent crime putting them on the offensive rather than responding to a crime that has already happened. The Sage Group CONFIDENTIAL Predictive Policing/Crime Analysis 5115 Maryland Way-Suite 204 Prepared By: Phil Costanzo Law Enforcement Mentoring Solutions Brentwood, TN 37027 917-281-5651 [email protected] “The Art of Empowering your Workforce” LE Mentoring Solutions Law enforcement currently uses one of two methods of machine based crime forecasting: univariate or multivariate: Univariate This method involves fewer points of data which simplifies the crime map. This method is often used to predict time expectations of certain crimes. Multivariate A more complex method of crime forecasting, it uses input from multiple databases including property records. This method is used to predict where new areas of crime may develop. It can also identify factors that contribute to a decrease or increase of particular crimes in specific areas. Machine based crime forecasting is proving to be valuable to law enforcement communities. Crime maps may not have the ability to prevent all crime but are critical tools enabling law enforcement to recognize where to use their strength and what policing methods are working. By better organizing their capabilities, effective crime prevention techniques can significantly reduce crime. As a problem area emerges, law enforcement can react in a timely and pro-active way that benefits the public welfare. Crime mapping enables police agencies to deploy manpower smarter which means our communities are safer. The Sage Group CONFIDENTIAL Predictive Policing/Crime Analysis 5115 Maryland Way-Suite 204 Prepared By: Phil Costanzo Law Enforcement Mentoring Solutions Brentwood, TN 37027 917-281-5651 [email protected] “The Art of Empowering your Workforce” LE Mentoring Solutions Crime Forecasting Requirements, Data Issues, and Methods For simple to intermediate crime forecasting methods – the primary focus of this article – most analysts already have many of the software packages they will need. Nevertheless, it is worth briefly discussing individual components because the sophistication of each will have a bearing on what it is you will be able to do. The first component is obviously a geographic information system (GIS). While strictly not required to produce actual crime forecasts, it is useful for displaying results as well as collecting data. For example, a GIS could be used to generate frequency counts of geocoded crime incidents by census tract, census block or grid cell. Many GIS systems also have built in statistical capabilities, such as spatial regression and data manipulation routines. The more sophisticated the GIS, the more you can do with your data. A staple of every crime analysis unit is a SQL compatible database. Databases are essential for gathering, storing and manipulating data that is often retrieved or exported from a variety of other database, such as an RMS, CAD system or others. Naturally, there are a variety of ways in which data can be imported into a database, but depending on the need another good tool to have in the crime forecasting toolbox (or in the crime analyst toolbox in general, for that matter) in conjunction with a SQL database is a data migration tool. Data migration tools are very useful for setting up and conducting automated data transfers/exports on a regular basis from multiple databases. The advantage of such tools is that they can connect to multiple platforms, even if they are in the cloud, and allow the user to manipulate data before they are deposited into the crime analysis database. For example, date/time formats can be changed, fields parsed etc., meaning that many tasks a crime analyst normally has to perform manually can be automated. So they are also a significant time saver. But even if a crime analyst does not have direct access to an RMS or CAD database and depends on, say, regular XML export files, a data migration tool can be set up to automatically scan a local or network directory for a new export file and, if it finds one, process it. Finally, no crime analysis unit should be without a good statistical software package. Most GIS systems and standard productivity software such as Microsoft Excel have some statistical features built in to them, but in order to progress beyond the most simple of crime forecasting techniques something more powerful is needed. Commercial statistics packages can be very expensive but fortunately there are some excellent open source alternatives. The Sage Group CONFIDENTIAL Predictive Policing/Crime Analysis 5115 Maryland Way-Suite 204 Prepared By: Phil Costanzo Law Enforcement Mentoring Solutions Brentwood, TN 37027 917-281-5651 [email protected] “The Art of Empowering your Workforce” LE Mentoring Solutions One of the issues unique to crime forecasting as compared to forecasting in other disciplines is that crime is a rare event, yet successfully building a crime forecasting model can require hundreds or thousands of data points. The more data you have and the higher quality it is, the more sophisticated a forecasting model you can build. So the first and most important step is to decide what types of data to use, how to get it, and how to incorporate it into a single dataset. A further issue that is related to how many data points you have is choosing the size of area by which you want to forecast as well as the time frame. While many analysts will have no choice but to use census tracts or blocks, or even police beats, those who decide to use grid cells or some other variable area size will have to experiment. If you choose too large an area you will have plenty of crimes but the tactical utility of even accurate forecasts diminishes. Pick too small of an area and most areas will have zero or one crime counts, meaning most forecasting methods will treat areas of high crime as outliers. Naturally, what constitutes the best size areal unit will depend on the crime type as well as jurisdiction. The choice of temporal unit also affects how many crimes you will have per unit for much the same reasons as areal units.