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Safety and Justice Program

Predictive
POLICING
The Role of Crime Forecasting
in Law Enforcement Operations

Walter L. Perry, Brian McInnis, Carter C. Price,

Susan C. Smith, John S. Hollywood

Supported by the National Institute of Justice

The research described in this report was sponsored by the National
Institute of Justice and conducted in the Safety and Justice Program
within RAND Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment.
This project was supported by Award No. 2010-IJ-CX-K007, awarded by the National
Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice. The opinions,
findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of
the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available for this publication.

ISBN: 978-0-8330-8148-3

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Summary

Predictive policing is the application of analytical techniques—particularly quantita-

tive techniques—to identify likely targets for police intervention and prevent crime or
solve past crimes by making statistical predictions. Several predictive policing methods
are currently in use in law enforcement agencies across the United States, and much
has been written about their effectiveness. Another term used to describe the use of
analytic techniques to identify likely targets is forecasting. Although there is a differ-
ence between prediction and forecasting, for the purposes of this guide, we use them
interchangeably.1

Objectives and Approach

Predictive methods allow police to work more proactively with limited resources. The
objective of these methods is to develop effective strategies that will prevent crime or
make investigation efforts more effective. However, it must be understood at all levels
that applying predictive policing methods is not equivalent to finding a crystal ball.
For a policing strategy to be considered effective, it must produce tangible results. The
objective of this research was to develop a reference guide for departments interested in
predictive policing, providing assessments of both the most promising technical tools
for making predictions and the most promising tactical approaches for acting on them.
More broadly, this guide is intended to put predictive policing in the context of other
modern, proactive policing measures.
We approached this task in three ways:

1. We conducted a literature search of academic papers, vendor tool presentations,

and recent presentations at conferences, drawing lessons from similar predictive

1 The most common distinction is that forecasting is objective, scientific, and reproducible, whereas prediction
is subjective, mostly intuitive, and nonreproducible. According to this distinction, the methods described in this
report are essential forecasting methods. However, the law enforcement community has used predictive policing
to describe these methods, so it is the term favored here.

xiii
xiv Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations

techniques used in counterinsurgency and counter–improvised explosive devices

operations and related research by the U.S. Department of Defense.
2. We reviewed a number of cases of departments using predictive policing tech-
niques that appear promising.
3. We developed a taxonomy of the different types of operational applications that
can be supported using predictive policing.

In many cases, we were able to illustrate how predictive technologies are being
used to support police operations through a set of examples and case studies. Although
some of the methods are promising and describe the current state of field, they are still
more academic than practical. Consequently, this guide can also be viewed as a profile
of the state of the art of predictive policing practices and the development of new pre-
dictive technologies. As such, it can be considered a baseline document.

A Taxonomy of Predictive Methods

In our assessment of predictive policing, we found that predictive methods can be

divided into four broad categories:

1. Methods for predicting crimes: These are approaches used to forecast places and
times with an increased risk of crime.
2. Methods for predicting offenders: These approaches identify individuals at risk of
offending in the future.
3. Methods for predicting perpetrators’ identities: These techniques are used to create
profiles that accurately match likely offenders with specific past crimes.
4. Methods for predicting victims of crimes: Similar to those methods that focus on
offenders, crime locations, and times of heightened risk, these approaches are used
to identify groups or, in some cases, individuals who are likely to become victims
of crime.

Tables S.1–S.4 summarize each category and show the range of approaches that
law enforcement agencies have employed to predict crimes, offenders, perpetrators’ iden-
tities, and victims, respectively. We found a near one-to-one correspondence between
conventional crime analysis and investigative methods and the more recent “predictive
analytics” methods that mathematically extend or automate the earlier methods. Con-
ventional methods tend to be heuristic, or mathematically simple. As a result, they are
low-cost and can work quite well, especially for analysts facing low to moderate data
volumes and levels of complexity. In contrast, full-scale predictive analytics require
sophisticated analysis methods that draw on large data sets. In this context, large refers
to an amount of data beyond what a single analyst could recall without the assistance
 Summary xv

of a computer program or similar resources. Conversely, low to moderate refers to a data

set that is sufficiently small that an analyst could reasonably recall its key facts.
Table S.1 summarizes predictive policing methods related to predicting crimes.
As the table shows, conventional approaches start with mapping crime locations and
determining (using human judgment) where crimes are concentrated (“hot spots”). The
corresponding predictive analytics methods start, at the most basic level, with regres-
sion analyses and extend all the way to cutting-edge mathematical models that are the
subjects of active research.
Table S.2 summarizes methods to identify individuals at high risk of offending in
the future. The bulk of these methods relate to assessing individuals’ risk. Here, con-
ventional methods rely on clinical techniques that add up the number of risk factors to
create an overall risk score. The corresponding predictive analytics methods use regres-
sion and classification models to associate the presence of risk factors with a percent
chance that a person will offend. Also of interest are methods that identify criminal
groups (especially gangs) that are likely to carry out violent assaults on each other in the
near future. Hence, these methods can also be used to assess the risk that an individual
will become a victim of crime.
Table S.3 summarizes methods used to identify likely perpetrators of past crimes.
These approaches are essentially real-world versions of the board game Clue™: They
use available information from crime scenes to link suspects to crimes, both directly
and by processes of elimination. In conventional approaches, investigators and analysts

Table S.1
Law Enforcement Use of Predictive Technologies: Predicting Crimes

Conventional Crime Analysis Predictive Analytics

(low to moderate data demand (large data demand and
Problem and complexity) high complexity)

Identify areas at increased risk

Using historical crime data Crime mapping (hot spot Advanced hot spot identification
identification) models; risk terrain analysis

Using a range of additional Basic regression models created Regression, classification, and
data (e.g., 911 call records, in a spreadsheet program clustering models
economics)

Accounting for increased risk Assumption of increased risk in Near-repeat modeling

from a recent crime areas immediately surrounding a
recent crime

Determine when areas will Graphing/mapping the Spatiotemporal analysis methods

be most at risk of crime frequency of crimes in a given
area by time/date (or specific
events)

Identify geographic features that Finding locations with the Risk terrain analysis
increase the risk of crime greatest frequency of crime
incidents and drawing inferences
xvi Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations

Table S.2
Law Enforcement Use of Predictive Technologies: Predicting Offenders

Conventional Crime Analysis Predictive Analytics

(low to moderate data demand (large data demand and
Problem and complexity) high complexity)

Find a high risk of a violent Manual review of incoming gang/ Near-repeat modeling (on recent
outbreak between criminal criminal intelligence reports intergroup violence)
groups

Identify individuals who may Clinical instruments that Regression and classification
become offenders: summarize known risk factors models using the risk factors
Probationers and parolees at
greatest risk of reoffending
Domestic violence cases with
a high risk of injury or death
Mental health patients at
greatest risk of future
criminal behavior or violence

Table S.3
Law Enforcement Use of Predictive Technologies: Predicting Perpetrator Identities

Conventional Crime Analysis Predictive Analytics

(low to moderate data demand (large data demand and
Problem and complexity) high complexity)

Identify suspects using a victim’s Manually reviewing criminal Computer-assisted queries and
criminal history or other partial intelligence reports and analysis of intelligence and other
data (e.g., plate number) drawing inferences databases

Determine which crimes are Crime linking (use a table to Statistical modeling to perform
part of a series (i.e., most compare the attributes of crime linking
likely committed by the same crimes known to be in a series
perpetrator) with other crimes)

Find a perpetrator’s most likely Locating areas both near and Geographic profiling tools (to
anchor point between crimes in a series statistically infer most likely
points)

Find suspects using sensor Manual requests and review of Computer-assisted queries and
information around a crime sensor data analysis of sensor databases
scene (GPS tracking, license
plate reader)

do this largely by tracing these links manually, with assistance from simple database
queries (usually, the names, criminal records, and other information known about
the suspects). Predictive analytics automate the linking, matching available “clues” to
potential (and not previously identified) suspects across very large data sets.
Table S.4 summarizes methods to identify groups—and, in some cases,
individuals—who are likely to become victims of crime. These methods mirror those
used to predict where and when crimes will occur, as well as some of the methods used
to predict who is most likely to commit crimes. Predicting victims of crime requires
 Summary xvii

Table S.4
Law Enforcement Use of Predictive Technologies: Predicting Crime Victims

Conventional Crime Analysis Predictive Analytics

(low to moderate data demand (large data demand and high
Problem and complexity) complexity)

Identify groups likely to be Crime mapping (identifying Advanced models to identify

victims of various types of crime crime type hot spots) crime types by hot spot; risk
(vulnerable populations) terrain analysis

Identify people directly affected Manually graphing or mapping Advanced crime-mapping tools
by at-risk locations most frequent crime sites and to generate crime locations
identifying people most likely and identify workers, residents,
to be at these locations and others who frequent these
locations

Identify people at risk for Review of criminal records of Advanced data mining techniques
victimization (e.g., people individuals known to be used on local and other accessible
engaged in high-risk criminal engaged in repeated criminal crime databases to identify repeat
behavior) activity offenders at risk

Identify people at risk of Manual review of domestic Computer-assisted database

domestic violence disturbance incidents; people queries of multiple databases
involved in such incidents are, to identify domestic and
by definition, at risk other disturbances involving
local residents when in other
jurisdictions

identifying at-risk groups and individuals—for example, groups associated with vari-
ous types of crime, individuals in proximity to at-risk locations, individuals at risk of
victimization, and individuals at risk of domestic violence.

Prediction-Led Policing Process and Prevention Methods

Making “predictions” is only half of prediction-led policing; the other half is carrying
out interventions, acting on the predictions that lead to reduced crime (or at least solve
crimes). What we have found in this study is that predictive policing is best thought of
as part of a comprehensive business process. That process is summarized in Figure S.1. We
also identified some emerging practices for running this business process successfully
through a series of discussions with leading predictive policing practitioners.
At the core of the process shown in Figure S.1 is a four-step cycle (top of figure).
The first two steps are collecting and analyzing crime, incident, and offender data to
produce predictions. Data from disparate sources in the community require some form
of data fusion. Efforts to combine these data are often far from easy, however.
The third step is conducting police operations that intervene against the predicted
crime (or help solve past crimes). The type of intervention will vary with the situation
and the department charged with intervening. Figure S.1 shows three broad types
of interventions (lower right of figure). They are, from simplest to most complicated,
xviii Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations

Figure S.1
The Prediction-Led Policing Business Process

Data

t
nm d
Collection

en
ro re

D cti
co

at o
vi lte

lle

a n
en A

D sio
at n
fu

a
Criminal
Analysis
Response
A
ss
es
sm
en
t

n
tio
In

ic
te

ed
rv

Police

Pr
en
tio

Operations
n

Situational • Increase resources in areas at greater risk

Awareness Generic

Crime- • Conduct crime-specific interventions

Provide tailored specific
information to
all levels • Address specific locations and factors
Problem- driving crime risk
specific

RAND RR233-S.1

generic intervention, crime-specific intervention, and problem-specific intervention. In

general, we hypothesize that the more complicated interventions will require more
resources, but they will be better tailored to the actual crime problems—and get better
results. Regardless of the type of intervention, those carrying it out need information
to execute the intervention successfully. Thus, providing information that fills the need
for situational awareness among officers and staff is a critical part of any intervention
plan.
The interventions lead to a criminal response that ideally reduces or solves crime
(the fourth step). In the short term, an agency needs to do rapid assessments to ensure
that the interventions are being implemented properly and that there are no immedi-
ately visible problems. The longer-term criminal response is measured through changes
in the collected data, which, in turn, drives additional analysis and modified opera-
tions, and the cycle repeats.
 Summary xix

Predictive Policing Myths and Pitfalls

Many types of analysis that inform predictive policing have been widely used in law
enforcement and other fields, just under different names. The lessons from these prior
applications can highlight many well-known pitfalls that can lead practitioners astray
and can provide recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of predictive policing
efforts.

Predictive Policing Myths

“Predictive policing” has received a substantial amount of attention in the media and
the research literature. However, some myths about these techniques have also propa-
gated. This is partly a problem of unrealistic expectations: Predictive policing has been
so hyped that the reality cannot live up to the hyperbole. There is an underlying, erro-
neous assumption that advanced mathematical and computational power is both nec-
essary and sufficient to reduce crime. Here, we dispel four of the most common myths
about predictive policing:

• Myth 1: The computer actually knows the future. Some descriptions of predictive
policing make it sound as if the computer can foretell the future. Although much
news coverage promotes the meme that predictive policing is a crystal ball, these
algorithms predict the risk of future events, not the events themselves. The com-
puter, as a tool, can dramatically simplify the search for patterns, but all these
techniques are extrapolations from the past in one way or another. In addition,
predictions are only as good as the underlying data used to make them.
• Myth 2: The computer will do everything for you. Although it is common to pro-
mote software packages as end-to-end solutions for predictive policing, humans
remain—by far—the most important elements in the predictive policing process.
Even with the most complete software suites, humans must find and collect rele-
vant data, preprocess the data so they are suitable for analysis, design and conduct
analyses in response to ever-changing crime conditions, review and interpret the
results of these analyses and exclude erroneous findings, analyze the integrated
findings and make recommendations about how to act on them, and take action
to exploit the findings and assess the impact of those actions.
• Myth 3: You need a high-powered (and expensive) model. Most police departments
do not need the most expensive software packages or computers to launch a pre-
dictive policing program. Functionalities built into standard workplace software
(e.g., Microsoft Office) and geographic information systems (e.g., ArcGIS) can
support many predictive methods. Although there is usually a correlation between
the complexity of a model and its predictive power, increases in predictive power
have tended to show diminishing returns. Simple heuristics have been found to
be nearly as good as analytic software in performing some tasks. This finding is
xx Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations

especially important for small departments, which often have insufficient data to
support large, sophisticated models.
• Myth 4: Accurate predictions automatically lead to major crime reductions. Predic-
tive policing analysis is frequently marketed as the path to the end of crime. The
focus on the analyses and software can obscure the fact that predictions, on their
own, are just that—predictions. Actual decreases in crime require taking action
based on those predictions. Thus, we emphasize again that predictive policing is
not about making predictions but about the end-to-end process.

Predictive Policing Pitfalls

To be of use to law enforcement, predictive policing methods must be applied as part
of a comprehensive crime prevention strategy. And to ensure that predictive methods
make a significant contribution, certain pitfalls need to be avoided:

• Pitfall 1: Focusing on prediction accuracy instead of tactical utility. Suppose an ana-

lyst is asked to provide predictions of robberies that are as “accurate” as possible
(i.e., to design an analysis in which as many future crimes as possible fall inside
areas predicted to be high-risk, thus confirming that these areas are high-risk).
One way to accomplish this is to designate the entire city a giant “risk area.” How-
ever, such a designation has almost no tactical utility. Identifying a hot spot that
is the size of a city may be accurate, but it does not provide any information that
police officers do not already have. To ensure that predicted hot spots are small
enough to be actionable, we must accept some limits on “accuracy” as measured
by the proportion of crimes occurring in the hot spots.
• Pitfall 2: Relying on poor-quality data. There are three typical deficiencies that can
affect data quality: data censoring, systematic bias, and relevance. Data censoring
involves omitting data for incidents of interest in particular places (and at particu-
lar times). If the data are censored, it will appear that there is no crime in a given
areas. Systematic bias can result from how the data are collected. For example, if
especially heavy burglary activity is reported between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m., it may
not be immediately clear whether a large number of burglaries actually occurred
during that hour or whether that was when property owners and managers dis-
covered and reported burglaries that took place overnight. Finally, relevance refers
to the usefulness of the data. For some crime clusters, it can be very useful to have
data going back many months or years. Conversely, if there is a spree of very simi-
lar robberies likely committed by the same criminal, several months of data will
not be of much use.
• Pitfall 3: Misunderstanding the factors behind the prediction. Observers—especially
practitioners tasked with making hot spots go away—may reasonably ask, “For a
given hot spot, what factors are driving risk?” “The computer said so” is far from
 Summary xxi

an adequate answer. In general, predictive tools are designed in a way that makes
it difficult, if not impossible, to highlight the risk factors present in specific areas.
There has been some improvement, however. When applying techniques, such as
regression or any of the data mining variants, using common sense to vet the fac-
tors incorporated into the model will help avoid spurious relationships.
• Pitfall 4: Underemphasizing assessment and evaluation. During our interviews with
practitioners, very few said that they had evaluated the effectiveness of the predic-
tions they produced or the interventions developed in response to their predic-
tions. The effectiveness of any analysis and interventions should be assessed as part
of the overall effort to keep the data current. Measurements are key to identifying
areas for improvement, modifying interventions, and distributing resources.
• Pitfall 5: Overlooking civil and privacy rights. The very act of labeling areas and
people as worthy of further law enforcement attention inherently raises concerns
about civil liberties and privacy rights . Labeling areas as “at-risk” appears to pose
fewer problems because, in that case, individuals are not being directly targeted.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that standards for what constitutes reasonable
suspicion are relaxed in “high-crime areas” (e.g., hot spots). However, what for-
mally constitutes a “high-crime” area, and what measures may be taken in such
areas under “relaxed” reasonable-suspicion rules, is an open question.

Recommendations

Our conclusions center on advice to three communities: police departments (the buyer),
vendors and developers, and crime fighters. Our advice centers on the role of predictive
policing in the larger context of law enforcement operations.

Advice for Buyers (Law Enforcement Agencies)

All departments can benefit from predictive policing methods and tools; the distinc-
tion is in how sophisticated (and expensive) these tools need to be. In thinking about
these needs, it is important to remember that the value of predictive policing tools is in
their ability to provide situational awareness of crime risks and the information needed
to act on those risks and preempt crime. The question, then, is which set of tools can
best provide the situational awareness a department needs?
Small agencies with relatively few crimes per year and with reasonably under-
standable distributions of crime (e.g., a jurisdiction with a few shopping areas that
are the persistent hot spots) are unlikely to need much more than core statistical and
display capabilities. These tools are available for free or at low cost and include built-
in capabilities in Microsoft Office, basic geographic information tools, base statistics
packages, and perhaps some advanced visualization tools, such as the National Insti-
tute of Justice–sponsored CrimeStat series.
xxii Predictive Policing: The Role of Crime Forecasting in Law Enforcement Operations

Larger agencies with large volumes of incident and intelligence data that need to
be analyzed and shared will want to consider more sophisticated and, therefore, more
costly systems. It is helpful to think of these as enterprise information technology sys-
tems that make sense of large data sets to provide situational awareness across a depart-
ment (extending, in many cases, to the public). These systems should help agencies
understand the where, when, and who of crime and identify the specific problems that
drive crime in order to take action against them. Key considerations include interop-
erability with the department’s records management, computer-aided dispatch, and
other systems; the ability to incorporate “intelligence” tips from officers (e.g., via field
interviews) and the public; the types of displays (“dashboards”) and supporting infor-
mation the system can provide; and, of course, the types of analyses and predictions
the system can support and under what conditions.

Advice for Vendors and Developers

The list of questions for purchasers doubles as guidance on desired capabilities for those
who develop predictive tools. Looking ahead, it could be useful to move beyond pre-
dictions to offer explicit decision support for resource allocation and other decisions.
We emphasize that predictive policing tools and methods are very useful, but they
are not crystal balls. Media reports and advertisements can give an impression that one
merely needs to ask a computer where and when to go to catch criminals in the act. We
ask that vendors be accurate in describing their systems as identifying crime risks, not
foretelling the future.
Finally, developers must be aware of the major financial limitations that law
enforcement agencies face in procuring and maintaining new systems. Licensing fees
of into the millions of dollars are simply not affordable for most departments. We sug-
gest that vendors consider business models that can make predictive policing systems
more affordable for smaller agencies, such as regional cost sharing.

Advice for Crime Fighters

Generating predictions is just half of the predictive policing business process; taking
actions to interdict crimes is the other half. The specific interventions will vary by
objective and situation. (A number of examples are described in Chapters Three and
Four of this guide; core resources on interventions are the Office of Justice Programs’
[Link] and the Center on Problem Oriented-Policing.) However, we have
identified some promising features of successful intervention efforts:

• There is substantial top-level support for the effort.

• Resources are dedicated to the task.
• The personnel involved are interested and enthusiastic.
• Efforts are made to ensure good working relationships between analysts and
officers.
 Summary xxiii

• The predictive policing systems and other department resources provide the
shared situational awareness needed to make decisions about where and how to
take action.
• Synchronized support is provided when needed.
• Responsible officers have the freedom to carry out interventions and accountabil-
ity for solving crime problems.
• The interventions are based on building good relationships with the community
and good information (“intelligence”).

Designing intervention programs that take these attributes into account, in com-
bination with solid predictive analytics, can go a long way toward ensuring that pre-
dicted crime risks do not become real crimes.