Chicago's 'Predictive Policing' List Isn't Preventing Violence

Since 2013, Chicago police have been attempting to identify individuals most likely to experience or perpetuate gun violence.

The program, known as the Strategic Subjects List, is supposed to help prevent shootings. But it has raised controversy: Its prediction analysis is based, in part, on identifying people who have been arrested for any crime with anyone who has since become a homicide victim. This selection criterion means that people could be placed on the list even if police have not identified them as currently criminally active.

A new RAND Corporation study has refueled this ongoing public debate, finding that those on the list are no more or less likely to be homicide or shooting victims than the control group that they studied, who were not on the list.

The study also found that those placed on the list were far more likely to be arrested for shootings. This could be, as police told the researchers in interviews, because the list was, in its initial phase, used to identify possible suspects.

“The finding that the list had a direct effect on arrest, rather than victimization,” the RAND researchers note, raises “privacy and civil rights considerations that must be carefully considered, especially for predictions that are targeted at vulnerable groups at high risks of victimization.” This means that the program was useful in investigating crimes after they happened rather than predicting and reducing their incidence.

Of the 426 people on the Strategic Subjects List during the study, 77 percent were black and 95.8 percent were male.