Frontline London campaign: Police set to use Minority Report-style software to target gangs

Computer system will map gang activity across capital’s 32 boroughs
Technology: Tom Cruise, Neal McDonough and Colin Farrell in Minority Report
Twentieth Century Fox

About 3,500 gang members in London are to be targeted by the Met via a new Minority Report-style computer system that will predict where and when offenders will strike next.

“Predictive analytics” software will use police data on “harmful individuals” to map gang activity and membership in each of the capital’s 32 boroughs.

It will also reveal “hotspots” of gang offending, predict the frequency with which members are likely to offend and use a “severity assessment” to work out which mobs pose most danger.

The aim is to let police target their anti-gang efforts more effectively. It is also intended to allow “improved social media monitoring” as a further way of combating gang offending. Details of the scheme, approved by deputy mayor for policing Stephen Greenhalgh, are set out in a City Hall report which says it may play a key role in cutting crime.

It says there are now 3,500 “active gang members” in the city and adds: “These are complex criminal networks, responsible for a high proportion of the crime in London and therefore a significant negative impact on public confidence. This has an obvious drain on police resources and those of the wider criminal justice group.”

The report says a reduction in such offending is likely to have a “major effect” on meeting the Met’s target of cutting both crime and its spending by 20 per cent by 2015 and to improve public confidence by the same figure.

System software will be provided free by consultancy firm Accenture in a 33-week pilot. A decision will then be made on whether to adopt it permanently.

Such technology, which resembles the “pre-crime” analysis seen in the film Minority Report, has already been used by the Met to tackle burglary and is said to have produced positive results.

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