Ethical Considerations of Predictive Analytics. Chicago Police Department. Douglas Crowley University of Chicago MSTR 31112 1 Bureaucracy, Politics & Ethics in a Digital Age Honorable William Evanina March 9, 2024 Ethical Considerations of Predictive Analytics. Chicago Police Department. Predictive policing is a law enforcement practice in which computer algorithms foresee where crime is more likely to happen (Lau 2020). It is used more as a forecast than a prediction. Certain areas are more likely to have crime, but crime is not guaranteed. There are two types of predictive policing: place-based and person-based. Place-based policing occurs when a program analyzes locations of past crimes and determines which areas are more …show more content…
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, consequentialism is the ethical decision of “whether an act is morally right” depending only on consequences. As opposed to the circumstances or the intrinsic nature of the act or anything that happens before the act.” (Sinnott 2003). To fully understand predictive policing through this ethical framework, it is essential to analyze the consequences of this technology (Viterbi Conversations in Ethics, 2022). One of the prominent issues with predictive policing technology is that it results in the over-policing of lower-income communities of color (Szwarc 2024). Predictive policing reinforces the intrinsically unjust systemic racism that plagues this country by promoting over-policing in neighborhoods of color (Viterbi Conversations in Ethics 2022). According to the Conversations in Ethics team at the University of Southern California (USC), these communities “should not have to suffer increased law enforcement activity and increased suspicion of their actions just because a computer program used biased data and recommended that police patrol their neighborhood.” (Viterbi Conversations in Ethics