What Police Can Learn from Deep Learning

Police departments are increasingly turning to predictive analytics to help them fight crime, and the early returns are positive, with double-digit drops in crime rates reported in many cities. According to big data analytics experts, police departments could spend their time and money more effectively by giving deep learning algorithms a role in the dispatch room. There are many factors that go into crime and crime rates. Despite what you may hear on the TV news, crime rates are down substantially from their peak in the early 1990s, a trend that's been attributed to everything from President Clinton's 1994 Violent Crime Control Act and the prison-building boom to a ban on lead-based paint and even Roe V. Wade. While crime rates are down, there is still more crime in the U.S. than other industrialized countries.