Ministry of Justice officials are developing what critics have called a ‘chilling and dystopian’ programme that aims to predict who might be future killers or serious offenders
A real-life Minority Report programme is being developed by the Government, reports say, with critics calling it “chilling and dystopian”.
It is hoped the programme will use data on thousands of people to try and spot the people who are most likely to become killers and committ other serious violent offences. The data includes information on the victims of crime, it is alleged, but this is denied by Government officials.
Originally called the ‘homicide prediction project’, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) hopes the now-named ‘sharing data to improve risk assessment’ aims to improve safety for the public.
Gender, names, birth dates, and ethnicity are among the bits of data being used in the scheme commissioned when Tory Rishi Sunak was prime minister.
The MoJ said it will “review offender characteristics that increase the risk of committing homicide” and “explore alternative and innovative data science techniques to risk assessment of homicide”, The Guardian reported.
Against accusations that there would be biased predictions against people who are less well off and also ethnic minorities, officials insisted it was just being used for research.
An MoJ spokesperson said: “This project is being conducted for research purposes only. It has been designed using existing data held by HM Prison and Probation Service and police forces on convicted offenders to help us better understand the risk of people on probation going on to commit serious violence. A report will be published in due course.”
The spokesperson also said it would “provide evidence towards improving risk assessment of serious crime, and ultimately contribute to protecting the public via better analysis”.
The scheme was discovered by the civil liberties advocate group Statewatch. The charity, which says one of its missions is to “monitor, analyse and expose state activity that threatens civil liberties”, blasted the project as “deeply wrong” and called it intrusive.
The MoJ said risk assessment tools are already used by the Probation Service and prisons and that this scheme could improve risk assessments.
Data from the Probation Service and Greater Manchester Police (GMP) from after 2015 is being used.
Statewatch said information about domestic abuse and self-harm could be used. This has been denied and officials said data on citizens with at least one criminal offence to their name has been used.
The section ‘type of personal data to be shared’ involves both criminal convictions but also when a person was first recorded as a victim or had contact with the police.
The section ‘special categories of personal data’ is said to contain “health markers which are expected to have significant predictive power”. This relates to self-harm, disability, suicide and other mental health issues.
Sofia Lyall, a researcher for Statewatch, said: “The Ministry of Justice’s attempt to build this murder prediction system is the latest chilling and dystopian example of the government’s intent to develop so-called crime ‘prediction’ systems.
“Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for ‘predicting’ crime are inherently flawed.
“This latest model, which uses data from our institutionally racist police and Home Office, will reinforce and magnify the structural discrimination underpinning the criminal legal system.
“Like other systems of its kind, it will code in bias towards racialised and low-income communities. Building an automated tool to profile people as violent criminals is deeply wrong, and using such sensitive data on mental health, addiction and disability is highly intrusive and alarming.”
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