Who Benefits from the Crime? - Books & ideas

Not sure if anyone has posted this, but it's worth reading if you're interested in PredPol (it also illuminates certain issues in Chapter 5 of 'Weapons of Math Destruction' that weren't discussed): In particular, the second-to-last paragraph, says "The question is crucial, however: regarding access to public security, to which social justice policy does the Predpol algorithm subject the community in question? Because of the data generating process, the algorithm is shaped on the basis of data deriving more from victims’ complaints than arrests made by police officers, therefore mostly directing its security offering towards communities that have reported crimes to the authorities (except for homicides). And yet, victimization surveys (in which data is collected from the general public regarding crimes they may have suffered) show that the distribution of complaints is not homogeneous across the population, because some victims believe the police can do nothing to solve their problems or that it is not worth reporting a crime. The fact that the victims do not involve the police is a reflection of their social position, their past experiences with the police, their place of residence and their likelihood of acting in the interests of their community. Non-reporting is a social phenomenon as such, which entirely escapes statistical learning from data recorded by the police. By failing to adjust its calculation of risk intensity in line with rates of non-reporting, [5] Predpol’s algorithm creates a bias with potentially serious social consequences: it may advise police to focus their security offering on a section of the population at the expense of people whose active participation in preserving the quality of life in their neighbourhood is the weakest."