Predictive Policing:

Perception of its risks and benefits by police trainees and citizens

Abstract

In the era of Big Data, law enforcement agencies are expected to analyze data in order to solve crimes, but also to prevent it. Predictive policing software aim to anticipate the most probable place and time for an offence to occur, giving police officer the opportunity to be “at the right place, at the right time”. Articles questioning the efficiency of the algorithm or the data used have been published in the past few years, but none of them step backed and search to know if the law enforcement agencies were ready for this paradigm-shift: from a reactive policing to a predictive policing. This article presents the results of the most recent (April 2018) France’s project research regarding organizational resilience and resistance to change in lights of predictive policing. More than 2000 peoples have answered 4 surveys about predictive policing, among them: citizens, police officers, police trainees, city officials, …