Ministers announce that, within five years, a new digital and data system will be used by police forces across England and Wales to help anticipate the likelihood of violent offences
The government has announced a multimillion-pound project to use data and artificial intelligence systems to help predict and prevent violent crime.
The Concentrations of Crime Data Challenge will bring together tech firms and academics with a remit to develop “a detailed real-time and interactive crime map”. This digital platform will deploy “advanced AI that will examine how to bring together data shared between police, councils and social services, including criminal records, previous incident locations and behavioural patterns of known offenders”, according to a press release issued by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Collating and interpreting this information will allow investigators to “detect, track and predict where devastating knife crime is likely to occur or spot early warning signs of anti-social behaviour before it spirals out of control”.
Having enabled authorities to earmark areas in which there is a high concentration of crime, the map will mean that “law enforcement and partners can direct their resources as needed and help prevent further victims”.
Government intends that the system will be up and running and used by police forces throughout England and Wales by 2030
Delivery of the project will be led by UK Research and Innovation, a non-departmental body funded by DSIT. The organisation will be provided will initial funding of £4m to support the construction of prototypes during the next six months.
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Minister for policing and crime prevention, Dame Diana Johnson, said: “As criminal networks keep evolving with technology, so too must our response. We are giving police the tools they need to make our streets safer, and this crime map will be a powerful tool, building on the expanded rollout of live facial recognition vans we [recently] unveiled… As part of our Plan for Change, we are investing in AI and other innovations that will help us be smarter on crime, staying ahead of the curve and prevent it from happening in the first place.”
Technology secretary Peter Kyle added: “Cutting-edge technology like AI can improve our lives in so many ways, including in keeping us safe, which is why we’re putting it to work for victims over vandals, the law-abiding majority over the lawbreakers. Our police officers are at their best when they join up to prevent crime rather than react to it, and R&D can deliver crucial tools for them to stay one step ahead of potential dangers to the public and property – keeping our streets safe and delivering on our Plan for Change.”
Over the past decade, government and UK police forces have conducted various experiments examining the potential for predictive analytics to help reduce violent crime.
In an interview with PublicTechnology in 2019, then superintendent of West Midlands Police Iain Donnelly discussed the aims of the National Data Analytics Solution (NDAS) project that he led – and characterised its ethos in markedly different language to the current government, whose press release opened with the claim that “criminals hell bent on making others’ lives a misery face being stopped before they can strike”.
Donnelly said of NDAS: “The… really important point to make here is that this is not about creating predictive insights which allow the police to start arresting people or even, for that matter, knocking on doors. This is about adopting a public-health approach to crime – and recognising that the police cannot arrest or enforce their way out of this situation.”
