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We have all seen the statistics. The number of crimes committed with the knife in London has reached its highest level since the beginning of records – with nearly 15,000 attacks in the past year alone
which represents about 40 offenses per year. day, which is really shocking. Five people were murdered in London last week.
Faced with this, it's easy to feel helpless or convince yourself that high levels of violence are inevitable in big cities like London.
not the case. If you look at urban areas around the world, you will find that politicians and police forces are doing everything in their power to improve the crime rate.
In the latest issue of Changing Cities, we'll explore some of these strategies and how technology opens up new opportunities to fight criminals – for better or for worse.
If you want to see how public policy can have an impact on lawlessness, there is no better place than New York. Between 1990 and 2017, the murder rate in the city has dropped by 87% – and crime in general has been decreasing every year for 27 years.
This is a remarkable feat, widely attributed to new ways of thinking – such as as a so-called "broken window" police, which involves seriously dealing with low-level crimes (such as theft simply) or hop on a bus without paying).
If New York shows what has been possible in terms of crime in recent decades, Cities are showing the way forward for the future, using technology and new techniques to try to make citizens safer
The truth is that not all innovations are positive – and this is certainly the case in criminal justice. Governments around the world are desperate to fight crime and are increasingly turning to digital tools to impose law and order, no matter what the cost. Let's examine the advantages and disadvantages of policing innovations in cities around the world.
Let's start with the awful. In China, the authorities have already started using armed robots to patrol overcrowded places – which other places will probably copy. At Zhengzhou Station, for example, 1.6-meter high robots stand guard – equipped with cameras and facial recognition software allowing them to track and follow suspicious people or wanted criminals. According to the Chinese newspaper People's Daily, the robot is also equipped with an "electrically loaded riot control tool" that can be used to bring a suspect to justice. All very futuristic – and a little scary.
On Tiananmen Square in Beijing, robots armed with stun guns are used to monitor the crowd, like a scene from a nerdy science fiction movie. This is a similar story in Dubai, which aims to make sure that the robotic police account for 25% of the total workforce by 2030.
In the Indian region of Uttar Pradesh, politicians bought drones equipped with loudspeakers and flashes. lighting to try to break the crowds. And if that does not work, flying machines can also launch tear gas bombs and pepper and paintball paintballs.
You can understand why the authorities might be tempted to go in that direction. It's potentially cheaper – after all, robots do not ask for a raise and do not threaten to strike (not yet, anyway). But in the end, maintaining law and order is not just about carrying a bigger stick to frighten criminals. So, if using robots falls into the category of "ugly", let's go to the purely "bad" one.
"In China, robots equipped with face recognition software are used to track suspicious people"
In Newark, the world's largest city In the US state of New Jersey, police decided to use innovative technology to engage the public. The initiative, Citizen Virtual Patrol, allows people to connect to video feeds from the city's CCTV network and inform the police of any suspicious acts. Again, it's easy to understand why the Newark leadership decided to deploy this system. The crime rate was on the rise and the police were overburdened – so why not use technology to gather the help of potentially thousands of local citizens involved?
This raises great concerns about the privacy of people so anyone can stay at home, track their movements and check. with whom you hang out at any time. As the executive director of the American Union of Civil Liberties of New Jersey says: "It's not just Big Brother, there's an infinite number of siblings here."
According to Professor Eric Piza, of John Jay Criminal Justice College: "Not only is the program likely to reduce crime, but it has opportunity to police the police for it. react to situations it should not react to. "
If we looked at horrific and harmful innovations in policing, where can we find the right one?
the success of New York approach means that many cities are copying this strategy in an understandable way, rather than proposing something new.
"Predictive policing uses algorithms to try to determine where and when serious crimes are likely to occur. "" [19659022] But the best way to use new technologies to fight crime is to intelligently badyze the data to help the police carry out their task.
Cities are increasingly using algorithms to predict where a crime might occur in the future – such as the PredPol system deployed by the Los Angeles Police Department to try to identify locations where serious crimes are most likely to occur at specific times.
This system is now known as the Predictive Police – and it is now deployed in more than 90 cities
According to computer scientist Daniel Neill of Carnegie Mellon University, "the police already know where the bad are neighborhoods. What they do not always know is the dynamics – such as when a bad neighborhood will suddenly experience a recrudescence of crime. This is the kind of questions that the predictive police can answer. "
Other cities follow suit. In Japan, Kyoto uses a computer system that badyzes 100,000 past crimes to identify when and where similar incidents can recur. This allows the police to put more agents on the niche at key times – and authorities to use data models to identify suspects in cases such as indecent badault and wrecks. of luggage. But the good thing is that it's about using technology to help police focus their resources instead of completely replacing human agents.
Because you observe how new technologies are used to fight crime, you can not but come to the conclusion that the old methods are the best. It means empowering the police, providing them with the resources and powers they need, and empowering communities to play their role. As Tony Blair said, one has to be "tough on crime and hard on the cause of crime". It may not be rocket science, but as the dramatic fall of crime in New York shows, it certainly works.
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