Police force in Britain is now gearing up to utilise IBM's predictive analytics technology, in order to predict potential flashpoints, where a crime is most likely to occur - not much unlike the Tom Cruise film Minority Report, where psychics are used to see in the future and identify criminals, before a crime has actually occurred.
The system, known as Crush (Criminal Reduction Utilising Statistical History) evaluates crime records, intelligence briefings, offender profiles and even weather reports, to identify areas where the probability of a crime occurring is high.
The “predictive analytics” technology has already been put into action by the Memphis, Tennessee Police department. Where it has proved to be a raging success, the Police department credits the technology as one of the key factors behind a 31 per cent fall in crime and 15 per cent drop in violent crime in Memphis, Tennessee.
John Williams, of the Memphis Crime Analysis Unit, said: “This is more of a proactive tool than reacting after crimes have occurred.
“This pretty much puts officers in the area at the time that the crimes are being committed.”
The software has been developed by IBM which has invested $11 billion in analytics over the past four years.
Mark Cleverley, the company’s head of government strategy, said: “What the technology does is what police officers have always done, sometimes purely on instinct – looking for patterns to work out what is likely to happen next."
“What is different is the scale on which the systems operates and the speed at which the analysis takes place."
Source: Telegraph
