Sometimes referred to as ‘crime forecasting’, predictive policing is where mathematical and analytical techniques are used to identify—or predict—potential criminal activity.

“Predictive policing is the collection and analysis of data about previous crimes for identification and statistical prediction of individuals or geospatial areas with an increased probability of criminal activity to help developing policing intervention and prevention strategies and tactics.” Albert Meijer & Martijn Wessels, 2019, p. 3.

Predictive policing systems use data sources from the police relating to crime, but also other sources. The selection of data can cause a problem in itself and concern is growing about ethical issues related to use of predictive policing in the United States (Richardson et al, 2019).

This CCI report reviews the state-of-the-art of predictive policing. It begins by explaining how predictive policing was first developed in the United States, where law enforcement agencies (LEAs) have implemented predictive policing within their policing practice. The report then goes on to discuss the implementation of predictive policing in two contexts: Germany and The Netherlands. In Germany, predictive policing was introduced in 2014 and is being applied in different ways across the sixteen German federal states. In the Netherlands, predictive policing was piloted in several regions in 2013 and was rolled out nationally in 2017.

Predictive policing strategies are encouraging LEAs, their partners and other stakeholders in the prevention of crime to look more critically at the collection and potential use of different data sources. However, predictive policing does has raised ethical issues in US and there are concerns about its application in European contexts. The ethical, legal and social issues related to predictive policing will be discussed fully in the CCI report (D4.1).