Predictive Analysis; It’s a New Tool of City Police Agencies
The
Chicago Police Department is teaming with a local university to develop a
system that predicts where crime will occur. According to the Chicago
Sun-Times, the city’s police department, the Illinois Institute of Technology
and Rand Corp. are working together on the system, which predicts crime hot
spots. With the data, the police can deploy resources more intelligently into
the affected communities. Funded by a $200,000 grant from the National
Institute of Justice, the stakeholders are tracking every incident that’s
linked to a known gang member in order to build the analytics engine. The
Chicago Police Superintendant revealed the city’s new crime-fighting strategy
at a press conference Sunday, August 8. The initiative was launched in April,
he said. The Chicago Police Department also launched an analysis group for the
program. The policing approach, called predictive analytics, has gained
momentum in recent years as law enforcement agencies have recognized that some
types of crime follow patterns that can be predicted by software.