Remember that cool movie Minority Report, where Tom Cruise live in a bluish future where they have these freaky cool bald chicks who can predict crime before it happens and then the cops go and arrest the person for the crime before they commit it?

And then he gets falsely pre-accused of a pre-crime he didn’t pre-commit? and then the rest of the movie devolves into a high tech future action film where the only interesting part is when Cruise is using the way cool future hologram floating in the air computer network?

Well, we’re still working on that bit.

But the whole predicting crime before it happens thing, we got that shit down cold.

Witness this artfully compiled enormous infographic!

Sadly, no bald chicks, floaty computers, or gun battles for computer files are involved. Instead, the miracle of crime prevention by crime prediction is done by boring old statistical analysis.

Turns out, police departments in large cities all over the USA have been compiling and analyzing data on past crimes for decades now in order to create a robust statistical model of crime. This model, in turn, is being used to try to predict future crime and hence be able to concentrate police resources in the area and prevent the crime from happening.

And the amazing thing is, this shit actually works!

The programs have produce solid results. Cities where they actually have less crime with fewer police officers. That is a highly eloquent demonstration of efficiency in policing.

Of course, before we get too amazed, a lot of that might be simple demographics. Crime has been going down across the board since the seventies, and so all this ballyhoo about the effectiveness of advanced police methods of various kinds might be nothing more than taking credit for the heat in the summer.

Why is crime going down across the board? A lot of people claim it is simply demographics. Fewer males 18-15 around, less crime. And there is statistical data to suggest there may be some truth to this. Most violent crime involves male humans between those two ages, and often, the violence they do is to one another.

But I also think that we are simply becoming more civilized. It might not seem like it sometimes, especially with the right wing anarchism running loose in the world right now, but I think that as society advances on a global scale, the ingredients of crime like poverty and a breakdown of orderly society become more scarce, the crime resulting from them falls proportionately.

But back to these crime prediction programs. There is presumably some truth to them, possibly a great deal. And if there is, then we have to wonder at the amazing advances in practical statistical analysis in the modern era.

I have waxed rhapsodic about this before, so I will try to be brief, but I would really like to know what has changed in the last decade that makes this kind of mad statistical wizardry work when before it was a rather sad joke that never did what it was supposed to do, or did it very badly.

I can only assume that it’s one part better maths to five parts simply having the computers to really crunch those numbers in ways unthinkable in the past.

Anyhow, back to the plot. I quite like the idea of cops being able to predict crime and show up in time to prevent it. Prevention is always vastly superior to punishing the perpetrators afterwards. The number one best deterrent against crime is preventing its success. No matter how young, dumb, and full of something you are, no matter how incapable of considering future consequences that youth and testosterone have rendered you, the fact that you will not even get to enjoy the proceeds of your crime for a heartbeat because you will never lay your hands on them in the first place will be a very strong disincentive towards crime.

You won’t get a chance to eat the chocolate bar you stole. You won’t even get it out of the store.

And while young people are capable of a lot of crazy, shortsighted things for a lot of decidedly insufficient reasons, they also give up in frustration fairly easily. A low enough chance of success would be enough to stop most of them dead in their tracks.

But despite the woefully unscientific scaremongering at the end of the infographic about “our rights are in jeopardy”, the answer to the question “Can we punish individuals before they commit a crime” is an obvious NO, and nobody is suggesting otherwise.

See, Minority Report is a work of science fiction. In order to invent and explore pre-crime as an interesting science fiction concept, Philip K. Dick had to invent freak bald psychic chicks who could magically predict crime with such accuracy that it was as though it had happened.

We don’t have freaky bald psychic chicks here in reality, and hence, we will never punish people for something they have not done. That would violate the very epistemological basis for the concept of law and order. People are punished for things they do. If they don’t do it, they are not punished. That is how the whole thing works.

Punish people for things they haven’t done, and you destroy the incentive to remain lawful. If you are going to get punished either way, might as well do it, right?

And that irrationality aside, I see no reason not to view statistical crime prevention as a wonderful thing. It does nothing to put innocent people in jail. In fact, it doesn’t put anyone in jail when it is operating at full capacity because it prevents the crime from happening in the first place.

And there is just plain no downside to that. We all want crime to go away. A world without crime sounds like a nice place to live to me.

All we need to do is realize that not all increases in police efficiency result in a loss of liberty.