Spearheaded by the Chicago Police Department in collaboration with the Illinois Institute of Technology, the pilot project uses an algorithm to rank and identify people most likely to be perpetrators or victims of gun violence based on data points like prior narcotics arrests, gang affiliation and age at the time of last arrest. An experiment in what is known as “predictive policing,” the algorithm initially identified 426 people whom police say they’ve targeted with preventative social services.
The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized the police department’s lack of transparency about whose names are on the list and how the list is being used. Digital-rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation, meanwhile, has said that the project could lead to increased surveillance.
But the most damning revelation about the program only just emerged: It doesn’t work.
A recently published study by the RAND Corporation, a think tank that focuses on defense, found that using the list didn’t help the Chicago Police Department keep its subjects away from violent crime. Neither were they more likely to receive social services. The only noticeable difference it made was that people on the list ended up arrested more often.
“The pilot effort does not appear to have been successful in reducing gun violence,” the study reads.
The researchers couldn’t determine why those on the list were more frequently arrested, but the dozens of interviews conducted during the study provided a clue.
“It sounded, at least in some cases, that when there was a shooting and investigators went out to understand it, they would look at list subjects in their area and start from there,” Jessica Saunders, the lead author of the study, toldMic.
In other words, some officers had used the list to target subjects for investigation in nearby crimes.
The idea that a futuristic, pre-crime program would lead to a heavier approach toward those who are already heavily policed aligns with the criticisms that rights-focused groups have been leveling at programs like the SSL since its birth.
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