Liberty has warned that the growing use of predictive crime mapping by British police forces poses a threat to citizens' rights and freedoms. [...]

Among the warnings set out in the report are concern that police algorithms: entrench pre-existing discrimination; increase the risk of “automation bias”; and lack transparency. [...]

Last year, Kent Police quietly scrapped a five-year pilot project that trialled computer software designed to predict and prevent crime

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. Technology developed by US firm Predpol involved machine learning algorithms that were able to predict when and where a crime might take place by processing data from records on previous criminal activity. While it has been used by the Los Angeles Police Department since 2011, it was the first time the technology was deployed in England and Wales.

It “had a good record of predicting where crimes are likely to take place”, John Phillips, a superintendent at Kent Police, told the Financial Times. But he added: “What is more challenging is to show that we have been able to reduce crime with that information.”