James Slessor, Managing Director of Accenture’s policing and public safety business

Police in the U.K. are testing a new investigative tool that tries to predict the likelihood of known gang members committing violent crimes in the not-too-distant future.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) has just completed a twenty-week study looking into the effectiveness of new software that could’ve been pulled straight out of the Minority Report – a 2002 Steven Spielberg movie which depicts a somewhat bleak future where police are able to arrest criminals before they commit their crimes.

British cops don’t have quite the same powers yet, but the system they’ve been testing should at least give them a better idea of which individuals to keep an eye on, reports the BBC. The software, built by Accenture Plc., pulls Big Data from various police databases and runs it all through an analytics engine. The system takes into account things like geography, previous offences, criminal assocations and other factors to try and determine which gang members are likely to commit crimes, and where they’re likely to happen. For example, it tries to keep track of known gang member’s threats and comments on social media.

“Our goal,” said James Slessor, Managing Director of Accenture’s policing and public safety business, “was to provide MPS with an unprecedented level of insight and intelligence to help them continue to reduce gang-related crimes in the city.”

Before undertaking the project, London’s police gathered data on gangs operating in 32 of the city’s boroughs (districts) over a period of four years, to try and predict which ones presented the highest risk. Afterwards, the results of this study were compared with actual criminal reports, and proved to be “very accurate”, with regards to pinpointing future lawbreakers, though the MPS didn’t release any more details than this.

The system certainly seems to work, but of course it isn’t without its critics. A spokesperson for a privacy advocate group called Big Brother Watch told the BBC it was concerned the police could end up “unfairly targeting certain groups of people”.

We’ve heard this argument before, most recently with the NSA’s massive surveillance programs and also with the controversial “stop and frisk” program carried out by the New York City police department, which often tends to target specific minorities.

However the MPS insisted its new software was focused on gang violence only, and gives it a way of combating crime more efficiently.

photo credit: Tara Poky via photopin cc