Precognition software used to predict which prisoners will murder

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:22:00 +0000

When a prisoner goes on parole, a parole officer determines the level of supervision the individual requires based on the perceived likelihood of his committing a crime again. In a number of states, these determinations are being increasingly taken out of the flesh and blood hands of parole officers, settled instead by algorithms.

Precognition software, already in use in Baltimore and Philadelphia, determines how likely a prisoner is to commit murder and thus how much parole supervision he should receive. Wired explains how the algorithm works:

To create the software, researchers assembled a dataset of more than 60,000 crimes, including homicides, then wrote an algorithm to find the people behind the crimes who were more likely to commit murder when paroled or put on probation. Berk claims the software could identify eight future murderers out of 100.

The software parses about two dozen variables, including criminal record and geographic location. The type of crime and the age at which it was committed, however, turned out to be two of the most predictive variables.

Salon.com > criminal

Precognition software used to predict which prisoners will murder