The technology used by the police seems to be nothing more than support for their program of targeted intervention. The system does not only identify potential

The technology used by the police seems to be nothing more than support for their program of targeted intervention. The system does not only identify potential perpetrators, but also their victims. Using data to identify people most in need of "concrete assistance in the form of social services, job training, childcare" just makes the process of doling out limited resources more efficient. >> “I think this is state of the art for predictive policing,” Lewin says. >> How will this form of predictive policing be received? Use of the word "predictive" here is utterly inaccurate because the police are not predicting anything, but rather identifying at-risk individuals. The inferential leap from "people with these n properties have historically been party to gun violence" to "prediction" is enormous. As soon as one mentions "prediction" and police in the same breath, it suggests Minority Report-style impingement on personal freedoms of some kind. The reason I stress this is because such a program might very well work to reduce gun violence, and labelling it as though it were the genesis of a Big Brother is not only disingenuous, but may also harm the program's legitimacy in the eyes of people who have the power to shut it down.