[HN Gopher] Swiss police automated crime predictions but has lit...
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Swiss police automated crime predictions but has little to show for
it
Author : jusbraun
Score : 130 points
Date : 2020-07-22 12:20 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (algorithmwatch.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (algorithmwatch.org)
| shmerl wrote:
| Reminds me Watchbird.
| motohagiography wrote:
| I tell people, the main use case for ML is to obfuscate and
| launder decision authority and accountability away from people
| and up into abstract organizations where nobody is accountable.
| If there is ever a question as to why the police made a decision,
| they can say it was their prediction model, which is so complex
| nobody could reasonably expect to understand it or be responsible
| for its outcomes.
|
| It's as though artificial intelligence itself were a
| cryptological problem where it's only real when it becomes
| sufficiently complex that information about who is accountable
| for it is destroyed.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I think one of the most important things we can do is to
| establish liability for prediction models to the people using
| the model.
|
| At the end of the day if you falsely arrest someone, fire them
| on bad grounds, etc then you're the responsible party. The
| excuse "Well but someone told me to!" doesn't work any better
| when you're blaming a machine instead of a person - it's still
| bunk.
|
| If the model is broken, well then that's on you. A vendor sold
| you a magical model saying it was perfect and you got in
| trouble anyways? Well, you can go on and try to sue the vendor
| and hash that out - after you pay for your mistake.
|
| It's critically important we don't allow models to become get
| out of jail free cards.
| progval wrote:
| Other people who should be liable, at least as much as those
| using the model:
|
| 1. sellers/providers of the model, if they lied about the
| efficiency
|
| 2. buyers/deciders, who not necessarily the same as those
| using the model (usually their bosses)
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| Discussions around responsibly applying probabilistic models to
| decision making at a societal level are really important to
| have.
|
| Myth-making about ML as a shadowy conspiracy--instead of just
| another tool for engineering, like databases--is counter-
| productive.
|
| The "main use case" for ML is the literal one, "designing
| models that can learn to predict high probability outcomes in
| situations where a deterministic model cannot be applied." It
| is another technology in an engineer's toolkit. Look at your
| smartphone, and you will see that the majority of apps you use
| rely on machine learning for ETA prediction, content
| recommendation, speech-to-text, image processing, translation,
| spam filtering, etc.
| mushbino wrote:
| It's worked ridiculously well for Wall Street.
| infinity0 wrote:
| TBF this is because there is no crime in Switzerland.
|
| The guys I work for are based in Zug ("Crypto Valley"). One time
| I was there, I went to a supermarket to buy some beers in the
| evening. At the self-checkout machine, as I was trying to pay,
| the machine asked me in German, "how old are you", with three
| options, 16-, 17, 18+. The 16- and 17 was in red and the 18+ was
| in green, and you just had to press the green button. No ID check
| or staff member coming around to look at you or anything.
| ExcavateGrandMa wrote:
| Police is there for ascertainment... nothing much...
|
| If someone wanna split the shell from the kernel...
|
| You'll get splitted... unless you are as crazy than the splitter
| :)
|
| Take it easy... it just an imaging of the real reality...
| raxxorrax wrote:
| A case where Germany has sold crapware to the Swiss. I mean
| geographic analysis of crime can certainly be helpful, but I
| doubt it can be more accurate than your average fortune teller if
| the rate of crime is as low as it is.
|
| The the software is named precobs in reference to minority
| reports precogs let's me believe their marketing team is hired
| from people selling penis enlargement on the internet. Perhaps
| they are just smarter because they know how often people are
| inclined to buy bullshit.
| INTPenis wrote:
| So which system would you have recommended?
| HissingMachine wrote:
| A doctor once said in some interview that if there really was a
| pill or treatment to enlarge your penis, you wouldn't need to
| market it through email, because everybody would know about it.
| I think crime prediction would follow the same rule.
| elchin wrote:
| This. We need to keep in mind crimes rates in Switzerland are
| extremely low.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But fear of crime is not, especially with the older
| generation in .ch.
| willyt wrote:
| I remember when I lived in London there was a time when it
| seemed like there were more and more police sirens
| everywhere, this made me feel like there had been a big
| increase in bad people doing bad stuff.
|
| But, it turns out, what had actually happened was they had
| changed the standard for sirens on emergency vehicles. As
| vehicles were modernised they all started to sound like
| police cars. At the same time a new system for medical
| emergencies was introduced that involved a first response
| by motorbike paramedic followed by backup a bit later from
| an ambulance if necessary, again all with sirens blaring.
| Suddenly it sounded like the police where rushing
| everywhere all the time. Whereas before you could tell the
| difference between a fire engine, an ambulance and a police
| car from the sound so you could tell what kind of incident
| was going on.
|
| I'm sure that contributed to a sense that there was a big
| crime problem in the 90's when in actual fact it was
| starting to tail off.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Which maybe means the Swiss cops know what they're doing, and
| we shouldn't be quick to mock this scheme.
| Thlom wrote:
| Crime rate have very little to do with how society is
| policed. If you want to find explanations look at wealth
| distribution, poverty rates, the school system, job market
| and so on.
| jmeister wrote:
| Come on. This disingenuous argument is exactly why Yoho
| flipped out at AOC earlier this week.
|
| Bending reality to fit one's political worldview.
| refurb wrote:
| Did NYC see a decrease in wealth inequality, poverty
| rates, improved school system and job market between the
| 70's and 00's?
|
| Because crime dropped almost 90%.
| rospaya wrote:
| Didn't national levels also fall sharply?
| refurb wrote:
| They did. But the question remains. Did any of those
| things listed get better in the US? I'd say no, except
| maybe employment?
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Bad/non existent policing definitely skyrockets the crime
| rate.
|
| But once you have decent policing, I can believe other
| factors dominate.
| jariel wrote:
| "Crime rate have very little to do with how society is
| policed. "
|
| This is totally false.
|
| Here's a far-left VOX article even brandishing the idea
| [1]
|
| Policing practices, particularly the number of police and
| their tactics have an enormous effect on crime.
|
| Obviously, social systems do as well, but there are
| plenty of very poor places with very little crime.
|
| [1] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2019/2/13/18193661/h...
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Or that there are social measures in place that prevent
| crime, rather than better policing of the crime that
| occurs.
| willyt wrote:
| There was no statistically significant difference between
| Swiss regions that did use the predictive software and
| those that didn't. All regions saw a broadly equivalent
| drop in crime.
| atoav wrote:
| Exactly. If the thing you are trying to predict is very rare
| (compared to business as usual), the error rates of your
| system have to be unfathomably low if you don't want to
| either drown in false positives or detect nothing at all (
| =expensive money wasting project).
|
| In some cases the error rates need to be _so_ low, that even
| claims like "we are 99.9% accurate" should be taken with a
| big crystalline block of salt.
|
| Remember this whenever terrorism is used as a reason why we
| desparetely need these surveillance mechanisms. If burglars
| are rare, terrorists are even rarer. The proposed systems are
| good for bigger things like demonstrations, social movements
| etc. but they suck at detecting terrorism, unless you have a
| metric ton of personal which will look at false positives all
| day long.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _the software is named precobs in reference to minority
| reports precogs_
|
| At the risk of making a low-quality observation: the name of
| the software feels like it stands for "precognition [is]
| bullshit".
| nitwit005 wrote:
| > It tries to predicts burglaries from past data, based on the
| assumption that burglars often operate in small areas. If a
| cluster of burglaries is detected in a neighborhood, the police
| should patrol that neighborhood more often to put an end to it,
| the theory goes.
|
| Heaven forbid they just put pins in a map.
| duxup wrote:
| I guess it depends on what we would want from crime predictions.
|
| Do we want a Minority Report type system where someone shows up
| right before the crime and prevents it?
|
| They mention burglary. I'm guessing most buglers aren't seasoned
| professional buglers and rather it is a crime of opportunity. So
| if a cop is on the street they won't do it ... but maybe they'll
| do it the next street over, 20 minutes later?
|
| Even if somehow there was better prediction, there really aren't
| enough police to patrol the target street, and the next one over,
| and the next one ... predictions may suppose infinite police
| resources would prevent it, but that's not a thing.
|
| This might be a topic where 'prevention' isn't really possible.
| smoe wrote:
| I don't have numbers, but I don't think there is much home
| burglary as a crime of opportunity in Switzerland. The places
| worth entering, usually have good enough security measures,
| that you need to come prepared and it is going to take you some
| time. What you usually hear is certain neighboorhoods being
| scouted for lights being off for longer time, indicating the
| people are on vaccation. But I don't know in what regards crime
| predictions systems are useful for that, what value they add.
| duxup wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| In the US break ins very much are more likely in less
| affluent areas.
| smoe wrote:
| I think because of low poverty and expansive social nets,
| crimes out of desperation are rare. E.g. Reducing crime is
| explicitly one of the main reasons why Switzerland mantains
| its heroin programme, providing the drug for free to people
| who have failed mutliple withdrawal attempts.
|
| The risk/reward for small crimes just doesn't check out for
| almost everyyone. Why a lot of those is in the hands of
| organised crime that can scale and optimize it and pick out
| the people willing to do the "last mile" dirty work.
| cerebellum42 wrote:
| In Germany it's very much not like that, organized groups
| (often coming from and returning to eastern european
| countries) make up a big chunk of burglaries and they are
| careful to choose areas with a high effort/reward ratio,
| which are rarely the low income areas.
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| Repeat rates are VERY high in burglary. And a person who
| hasn't burgled is relative unlikely to commit a home burglary
| even if the opportunity presents. Some neighborhoods without
| repeaters here all leave their doors unlocked. I grew up in
| an area like this, never had a house key until I moved away,
| we would go on months long vacations without locking up the
| house. Literally EVERY neighbor could have walked in anytime
| (house was totally dark). It never happened.
|
| Car thefts as well, I lived in a tough neighborhood, same
| guys checking cars all the time. If these guys were around
| just roll down windows and leave car unlocked. Still had my
| car stolen which was annoying.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| You might be confusing petty theft (pickpocketing etc.) with
| the legal of definition of burglary. Burglary involves breaking
| into property and then stealing something.
|
| I don't know how you could possibly commit burglary as a crime
| of opportunity.
| duxup wrote:
| You see an empty house, it's quiet, you act.
| netsharc wrote:
| I'd imagine burglars would scout the houses and area well
| before going in, and in Europe they have professional gangs.
| lordnacho wrote:
| This is an education failure on the part of the purchasers. They
| should know what you can and cannot do with data. Think about the
| dataset you'd need to make the burglary prediction. Cops would
| have some priors about where/when it might happen, but is the
| data actually collected?
|
| You'd need to know a lot of things about a large number of homes
| in order to see how the characteristics are distributed. Has the
| house been left empty for a while? Has someone posted about their
| holiday on FB? Is there something of value in the house? What
| security measures are there? Are known house-burglary gangs in
| action in the area?
|
| Those are the kind of things you'd think cops might have priors
| on. I'm sure one can chime in on this. But they're also the kinds
| of things that you might have problems collecting data for. And
| even if you had it, your false positive rate needs to be pushed
| pretty low for it to be useful. Plus your false negative (place
| is burgled but system didn't say) needs to be really low, in a
| country where there isn't that much crime to begin with.
|
| For the second system, as the article says, you can just say
| everyone is a risk. It's like saying everyone has Covid, you'll
| correctly find all the carriers. This is an obvious issue with ML
| systems that a purchaser needs to understand.
|
| The last system, with the recidivism, is maybe the most
| concerning. It seems to suggest that people's paroles are decided
| based on this system? Then you'd better have good evidence that
| the system works, in the sensitivity/specificity sense.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| What about the seller?
| lordnacho wrote:
| You mean is it a bit naughty to sell something as if it's
| more than it really is?
|
| I think you could make that case.
| t0mmel wrote:
| There simply isn't enough data to base predictions on. It will be
| close to random wether or not this system will "predict" a crime,
| to a similar degree that a clairvoyant can guess where the next
| crime will happen.
|
| It seems like the law of small numbers at play here - or a snake-
| oil salesman doing a thorough job.
| jusbraun wrote:
| A review of 3 automated systems in use by the Swiss police and
| judiciary reveals serious issues. Real-world effects are
| impossible to assess due to a lack of transparency.
| dqpb wrote:
| Predicting crime is great. It means you're working to understand
| the state of your society.
|
| Using it for policing is idiotic. You can't arrest a statistic.
|
| Instead, it should be used for public policy, to understand what
| communities are at risk, direct efforts to understand why they
| are risk, and engineer better systems to support those
| communities.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| This is the same as any other (ab)use of statistics. Forecasting
| is a valid and useful practice for managing your people and
| process. Maybe you redeploy resources to improve response time or
| schedule shifts to match forecasted incidents, etc. Data
| collection is pretty awful with this type of data, so good luck
| doing much more.
|
| But the problem is that the public hears something different when
| they hear "automated crime prediction". People hear something
| novel that could prevent crime. After all, if rain is predicted,
| you grab an umbrella.
|
| The reality is that cops on the street already know where crimes
| are likely to happen. You'll get some tools to reduce workload on
| police sergeants doing scheduling and things like data
| presentation are probably the primary benefit. Not as sexy as
| minority report.
| iagovar wrote:
| > The reality is that cops on the street already know where
| crimes are likely to happen.
|
| As for many jobs. I work as a consultant and I'm surprised how
| little effort companies do have conversations with their
| workers. People in the operational side of things is worth
| listening.
|
| In fact, If I'm valued and I have clients that called me
| several times it's because I like to interviews, focus groups
| and informal conversations.
|
| In the end, if I have to summarize my job, I listen to people
| and then do some stupid stuff with numbers to look professional
| and make my client swallow it. That's about it. It's 30k,
| thanks.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| I suppose it is lack of trust.
|
| And they do trust you, so they pay you.
| clairity wrote:
| you could simply write a geographic correlation function on
| income/wealth and race/ethnicity and do just as well at this
| kind of forecasting, since police find crime where they look,
| and they tend to look in poorer and non-white areas.
|
| further, we need to disabuse ourselves of the idea that we can
| predict crimes to any degree beyond random (vs. aggregate
| stats, like crime rates), because it's tantalizing ideas like
| that which leads to the slide into surveillance and
| totalitarianism without any real, positive return to society as
| a whole.
| valvar wrote:
| I don't believe anyone on HN is so naive that they think that
| the main reason crime rates vary between areas is that police
| presence varies. Your post makes it sound like you are, but I
| assume that you only think varying presence skews the numbers
| rather than generates them?
| clairity wrote:
| i would hope no adult is naive enough to believe police
| magically appear only where crime is and only addresses
| clear and existing crime, rather than being embedded in a
| complicated sociopolitical system overwhelmed by legal
| pitfalls. those are stories we tell children to comfort
| them for sleep.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| The vast majority of frontline policing is in response to
| an emergency call, so they have no control over where it
| is.
|
| HN seems to think police spend their shift waiting for
| crimes to happen in front of them.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "HN seems to think police spend their shift waiting for
| crimes to happen in front of them"
|
| Some police stations definitely work that way. And some
| even close their eyes, so they can go on waiting.
|
| It is in the poorer areas, where you could arrest all day
| long to the point of why bother. Makes sense, if the
| source of crime is complicated.
| vkou wrote:
| > HN seems to think police spend their shift waiting for
| crimes to happen in front of them.
|
| No, but when they aren't responding to calls, they spend
| the rest of their shift going on fishing expeditions.
|
| What do you think traffic cops, for instance, are doing
| most of their day? What about the cruiser slowly driving
| through a neighbourhood? They aren't there to respond to
| a call, they are just running license plates/looking for
| poorly maintained cars to pull over (Obviously, if
| someone egregiously breaks traffic rules in front of
| them, they don't need to look very far - but when
| nobody's breaking the rules, they can always find someone
| who looks suspicious.)
|
| The thing is, when you only go on fishing expeditions in
| poorer neighbourhoods/targeting poorer vehicles, you're
| going to find that will skew crime statistics - and
| statistical model based on that will direct even more
| policing towards those areas.
|
| It's why in the United States, the higher you are on the
| income ladder, the more illegal drugs you consume - yet
| the lower you are on the income ladder, the more likely
| you will end up in prison for drug use.
| clairity wrote:
| that's a misdirection. most crimes are not emergencies,
| and policing encompasses much more than emergency
| response.
|
| if policing were just, we'd see many more white-collar
| crimes like corruption, bribery, embezzlement, fraud,
| extortion, etc. being busted, because those crimes have
| much larger impact and wider fallout on communities and
| wider societies.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| White collar crime isn't a task for police any more than
| tax evasion is - those just plain aren't tasks they are
| meant for as opposed to public safety tasks. Which also
| explains why they are less funded, even without any
| conflicts of interest they aren't "sexy" crimes that grab
| attention, they all also lack urgency and thus are easily
| "procrastinated". Digging through records can uncover
| many of them and there are a lot of them.
|
| The police in their current role only show up at the
| behest of warrants in those situations to search or
| arrest.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Enforcement has an impact that can be measured for certain
| activities, but not all.
|
| For example, enforcement of DWI laws had a meaningful
| impact on alcohol-related traffic fatalities. Deployments
| in NYC targeting crime of opportunity for things like
| muggings had a meaningful impact.
|
| In some cases, there may be a halo effect where addressing
| certain problems may reduce others. But it's not a magic
| bullet. Drugs seem to be an example where enforcement has
| limited impact on outcomes. You also have the risk of heavy
| routine enforcement fostering corruption. A good example is
| the Border Patrol, which arrests ~250 officers annually.
| tomschlick wrote:
| > since police find crime where they look, and they tend to
| look in poorer and non-white areas.
|
| That's true for property crime, moving violations, etc. But
| most of these crime predictors are looking at break ins,
| violent crime, murders, etc. Those numbers don't go up when
| police are focusing on an area, those generally go down.
| jriddle567 wrote:
| at least they created some jerbs
| friednitz wrote:
| Maybe it doesn't work because it wasn't allowed to make crime
| predictions that were too racist?
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| Ha.
|
| The swiss had something like 50 murders TOTAL of which only 3
| were unsolved. That's something like 0.5 per 100,000?
|
| The USA is probably an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE higher?
|
| The solve rates for crimes in the USA is horrendous - something
| like 35% in places like Baltimore.
|
| Before we talk about how little the swiss have to show for their
| approach, perhaps we should allow them a touch of credit for
| creating a system that has reduced homicides AND led to the
| identification and conviction of those who commit them?
|
| And maybe do something about the 15,000+ people killed per year
| in the US?
| kogus wrote:
| The US rate for murder is five per 100,000. So yes, one order
| of magnitude higher than that of Switzerland (assuming your
| number is accurate).
|
| Source: https://usafacts.org/data/topics/security-safety/crime-
| and-j...
| dang wrote:
| _Please don 't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to
| emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will
| get italicized._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| The story is about how a specific technology doesn't move the
| needle much, not about where the needle started off at.
| srean wrote:
| But where the needle started at can absolutely matter. Ten
| degrees of movement need not be equal effort when it is
| obtained starting at 5 versus starting at 50.
|
| The headroom that remains to improve will likely matter too,
| less the headroom more difficult it might be to reap the last
| inch.
| thoraway1010 wrote:
| But it misses the larger context which is that Swiss are
| proactive in trying to reduce crime through many approaches.
| They use many automated tools, hotspot mapping etc. The
| article even mentions they use something like 20 tools.
|
| As a result of this larger effort, they have kept crime low
| and solve lots of serious crime.
|
| The US has really moved to what I might call the critique
| approach in this area. No one is willing to propose actual
| solutions, but everyone likes to complain and critique. This
| creates somewhat of a do nothing or can't do effect in govt
| especially and I think also reduces attractiveness of
| professions like policing or working in govt (you can't ever
| actually do or even try things without folks eagerly slamming
| you).
|
| Pretty pathetic - and doesn't bode well for our covid testing
| / tracing response either.
| projektfu wrote:
| Indeed, and the Swiss are being compared to the Swiss.
| (Canton to canton)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| The point is that the technology needs data. If crime is very
| low it is difficult to gather enough meaningful data.
|
| But perhaps a counterpoint is that if crime is high maybe
| there is no need to use algorithms to tell you which areas
| are worse...
|
| Overall, I'm thinking that the value of this technology is to
| use enough data to detect any trends or patterns that are not
| obvious and would likely go undetected otherwise.
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