Expanding Predictive Policing, Enhancing Infiltration Strategies

Abstract

Abstract-Predictive policing seeks to make predictions about criminal activity by using comprehensive collected data as inputs to statistical models. Borrowing from the conceptual tool box of political science, this paper lays out a further possibility for enhancing predictive policing: qualitative research in order to discern conditions that explain success or failure of interventions, specifically infiltration strategies. Whereas predictive policing focuses on individual actors that commit criminal acts, the "hot spots" identified in this paper are not individual perpetrators but collective movements (organized crime). Additionally, the focus lies on evaluating intervention strategies by identifying efficient infiltration strategies for informants. While predictive policing focuses on "hot spots" and "hot people," the tool developed in this paper focuses on "hot collective movements" (organized crime) and "hot intervention strategies" (infiltration). It develops a conceptual tool to establish effects of and on infiltration, based on enabling or hindering conditions traced in qualitative case comparisons. Expanding variable variety through qualitative case comparisons in order to account for effects of and on infiltration makes predictive policing dynamic and, potentially, more predictive.Index Terms-Infiltration, organized crime, predictive policing, qualitative research.