We live in interesting times. Not that I want to depress you, but everything is accelerating rather faster than I’d like. Take crime, for instance – the news in the UK report a big increase in violent crime. I seem to have a knack of working on data, only to see a few days later a story in the press that addresses the very story that I was researching.
See below, a quick visualisation of crime in my home town of Hemel Hempstead:
It is, of course, a work in progress – but it shows, in the cluster pies, the number of crimes recorded in the last year up to November 2017. The Crime Type pie has a segment selected that shows violent crime, and, indeed, it has increased steadily over the course of the year. Sadly, the outcome pie’s biggest segment for all categories is “No suspect identified”.
I am also an active member of a Facebook page for residents of my town. My fellow Hemelites are very concerned by crime, as there are countless thefts occurring all the time (more serious crimes don’t make it on the page as they are usually embargoed by the police).
Being an avid science fiction reader, I have read countless stories about solutions to this problem. Here’s one possible scenario:
“The town is monitored by a pervasive network of sensors and cameras. Each citizen is equipped with a device that helps locate an identify them at any time. The camera and sensor network is supervised by an Artificial Intelligence that works out who is where and doing what. The key with AI is that it learns to identify patterns which are out of the ordinary. Such patterns can trigger the attention of the police, whose much reduced numbers through spending cuts are far better utilised when investigating suspicious events that the ever-watchful AI has identified.
The monitor AI also identifies persons who do not carry a device, or who do not fit the profile of the usual device carrier. This, again, triggers the attention of the police who can then either send the person on their way out of the town boundaries, or issue them with a ‘guest’ device to comply with the monitoring system.
In the event of a crime, the AI can produce movements and locations of all persons present at the location.”
Science fiction, yes ? Well it might have been ten or twenty years ago. It so happens that I could put together a technical solution consisting of smartphones, cameras and sensors, Artificial Intelligence programmes and an identity tracking system like MicroStrategy’s Usher that would do just that.
It’s Big Brother, yes ? But if we have a society where the police is in retreat, I’m not sure I prefer the Mad Max alternative.
As with all supervisory systems, human or machine, the key is this: Who watches the watchers ? That’s for us to solve. But I believe my solution would reduce crime considerably. Should I write to my MP and propose this ?
A Blog about Data 
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