2024 ESIF Economics and AI+ML Meeting: August, 2024
Predictive Enforcement
Yeon-Koo Che, Jinwoo Kim
This paper examines the use of data-informed predictions to guide law enforcement efforts. Such “predictive” enforcement can lead to data being selectively and disproportionately collected from neighborhoods targeted for enforcement by the prediction. Predictive enforcement that fails to account for this endogenous “datafication” may lead to the over-policing of traditionally high-crime neighborhoods and performs poorly–in particular, in some cases as poorly as if no data were used. By incorporating the impact of enforcement on criminal incentives, we identify additional benefits of using data efficiently for deterrence.
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