Technology

Turns out if you just assume any minority is always guilty of a crime and only take action against them, the statistics back up your assumptions instead of reality!

If you randomly selected a citizen as the culprit every time a crime was committed the only percentage of accuracy it wouldn't be is 0%, because it's inevitable you would be right at least once.

Relevant clip from The Wire

Sort of, blood spatter is kinda legit: It's derived from old tracking techniques so it's not totally bullshit (but it's also not a super power or anything). You can tell if someone was running and blood was dripping or if it came from them getting repeatedly hit with something, etc. That's part of forensics, some of which is legit science (though it's not perfect and there are people who are full of shit that hire themselves out as "experts" sometimes).

Simply convict one person for each crime. The computer pointed at that person for this crime so they must be guilty.

I mean that's just not a realistic thing to believe. People aren't actually unique or special.

So at some point computational power will meet the right algorithm and suddenly we can model morons.

Short sprint to predictive policing. And before anyone gets all bent out of shape, go ahead and ask a criminal defense attorney how many of their clients are 'criminally stupid.' Based on conversations I've had, I imagine the answer is 'a fuck ton of them.'

Of course that makes people feel weird so we probably won't do it even when we can, but that's not the same thing as 'it'll never be possible.'

Highly unlikely that'll be the case forever. We can already do population level behavioral prediction for advertising purposes. It's just a matter of time, quality data generation, and finding the right algorithm before we will be able to accurately predict where and when police resources should be deployed to efficiently deter crime. Especially since we already have a decent idea as to the factors that generally lead to spikes in crime-rates things like: poverty, widespread social isolation and low social cohesion, alcohol and drug use, perceived opportunity, and the presence of easily victimized populations such as racial minorities, religious minorities, the disabled, and the LGBT+ community.

Tbh, we don't even need such an algorithm because we already know that the best ways to reduce crime are to increase protections for those minorities, alleviate poverty, reduce the presence of alcohol selling establishments, provide addiction/mental illness care, promote social cohesion, and have community events where law enforcement builds trust and bonds with their local communities, promoting co-operation and mutual respect between law enforcement and the people they are supposed to protect. In other words, the best ways to combat crime are the exact opposite of what everyone in the USA has generally been doing, especially conservative areas. Predictive policing is only even desirable because we don't want to do the hard work of actually improving people's lives and building communities where crime isn't something people have/want to consider.