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.