Predictive policing: Utopia or dystopia? On attitudes towards the use of big data algorithms for law enforcement

Abstract

The use of predictive AI tools to improve decision-making in relation to crime prevention and investigation is a reality. They are being implemented almost before we fully understand how they work, while we make legal decisions that may determine the progress of the technology, and long before we can predict their full impact. This paper addresses the attitudes towards this technological revolution applied to criminal justice, focusing in particular on its use by police. The first section summarizes and describes the techniques and technologies that make up predictive policing. Subsequently, the main part of the study analyzes how this technology has been received. This ranges from optimism from those who defend its immediate implementation as a way to improve police objectivity and efficiency, to pessimism from those who see its use as fostering a dystopia of State control and surveillance. These two extremes reflect the shift from optimism to technological pessimism in the twentieth century. The article concludes with a defense of a realistic, critical and informed view of the use of these predictive algorithms. This vision accepts that there are no neutral technologies yet does not fall into fatalism and technophobia. It is one that places the human being and legitimate policing at the centre of the algorithmic equation while redefining its objectives based on the scientific evidence applied to each individual technology.