UK UK creating ‘murder prediction’ tool to identify people most likely to kill - Algorithms allegedly being used to study data of thousands of people, in project critics say is ‘chilling and dystopian’

The government says the project, the existence of which was discovered by Statewatch, is for research only. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The UK government is developing a “murder prediction” programme which it hopes can use personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.

Researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to analyse the information of thousands of people, including victims of crime, as they try to identify those at greatest risk of committing serious violent offences.

The scheme was originally called the “homicide prediction project”, but its name has been changed to “sharing data to improve risk assessment”. The Ministry of Justice hopes the project will help boost public safety but campaigners have called it “chilling and dystopian”.

The existence of the project was discovered by the pressure group Statewatch, and some of its workings uncovered through documents obtained by Freedom of Information requests.

Statewatch says data from people not convicted of any criminal offence will be used as part of the project, including personal information about self-harm and details relating to domestic abuse. Officials strongly deny this, insisting only data about people with at least one criminal conviction has been used.

The government says the project is at this stage for research only, but campaigners claim the data used would build bias into the predictions against minority-ethnic and poor people.

The MoJ says the scheme will “review offender characteristics that increase the risk of committing homicide” and “explore alternative and innovative data science techniques to risk assessment of homicide”.

The project would “provide evidence towards improving risk assessment of serious crime, and ultimately contribute to protecting the public via better analysis”, a spokesperson added.

The project, which was commissioned by the prime minister’s office when Rishi Sunak was in power, is using data about crime from various official sources including the Probation Service and data from Greater Manchester police before 2015.

The types of information processed includes names, dates of birth, gender and ethnicity, and a number that identifies people on the police national computer.

Statewatch’s claim that data from innocent people and those who have gone to the police for help will be used is based on a part of the data-sharing agreement between the MoJ and GMP.

A section marked: “type of personal data to be shared” by police with the government includes various types of criminal convictions, but also listed is the age a person first appeared as a victim, including for domestic violence, and the age a person was when they first had contact with police.

Also to be shared – and listed under “special categories of personal data” - are “health markers which are expected to have significant predictive power”, such as data relating to mental health, addiction, suicide and vulnerability, and self-harm, as well as disability.

Sofia Lyall, a researcher for Statewatch, said: “The Ministry of Justice’s attempt to build this murder prediction system is the latest chilling and dystopian example of the government’s intent to develop so-called crime ‘prediction’ systems.

“Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for ‘predicting’ crime are inherently flawed.

“This latest model, which uses data from our institutionally racist police and Home Office, will reinforce and magnify the structural discrimination underpinning the criminal legal system.

“Like other systems of its kind, it will code in bias towards racialised and low-income communities. Building an automated tool to profile people as violent criminals is deeply wrong, and using such sensitive data on mental health, addiction and disability is highly intrusive and alarming.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “This project is being conducted for research purposes only. It has been designed using existing data held by HM Prison and Probation Service and police forces on convicted offenders to help us better understand the risk of people on probation going on to commit serious violence. A report will be published in due course.”

Officials say the prison and probation service already use risk assessment tools, and this project will see if adding in new data sources, from police and custody data, would improve risk assessment.

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[Garm]

Ok, dystopian hell, what fun.
But they are known to the police and the police do nothing. An elderly gentleman had his eyes gouged out by a schizophrenic last week and the killer had a long history of threats, mental health issues blah blah.
The uk mental health infrastructure is so bad that people who have been stopped from an active suicide attempt just get taken to a doc to check they’re not going to die then taken home. No follow up, nothing.
They already have a long list of violent nutters. And they seem quite content to let them kill people amd arrest the natives for wrongthink.
So what’s the aim here?

That's what I was thinking was going to happen. Spend millions on a program that they will ignore the outputs of but the program will be kept alive for some bullshit reason.

 

[Molag Bal]

And so on. A lot of what the government does is just robbing the public purse. Its why this nation falls into shit. If it was a dystopian as you yanks seem to think it is, why do we still have crazy crime, how am I still hating pakis and niggers, why can they seemingly not get a handle on anything that is causing issues

Because from their perspective, it is working as intended.
Think of it as a set of mathematical equations and parameters.
>Good = positive values, Bad = negative values
>Killing White person = good -> 1 White person killed or raped => +1 to overall situation
>Killing Jewish person = very bad -> 1 Jewish person killed or raped => -10 to overall situation
>Killing other minority = still bad but forgivable -> 1 other minority killed or raped => -1 to overall situation
>Gov rationale: If all killings and rapings are tallied up, Paki and other Muhammedeen crime retains a massively positive score, therefore we should continue to promote them institutionally and knock down barriers of entry they have faced so far, so that they can drive their score further into the positive.
It is literally that simple. The UK government isn't 'failing to get a handle on crime', it is facilitating it on purpose, because the results score positively in their objective parameters. With 90% of those rape gang members in northern England, the police have the addresses of the perpetrators, they've even seen the perpetrators WITH the victims and in a few cases, joined in on the gang rapes themselves. If they wanted to crack down on this, they could eradicate those gangs within the span of a week.

Whenever you hear someone speaking in terms like that a country or institution or company is 'too White' or 'needs more diversity' the person speaking in those terms operates by the same logic described above. And that same logic being applied to policy is why the UK is in its current situation.