PredPol perpetuates racial, ethnic, income bias

An investigation by The Markup and Gizmodo has discovered potential bias issues with crime prediction system PredPol.

Analysis of a huge volume of crime predictions left on an unsecured server showed PredPol (now renamed Geolitica) often avoided White and middle-to-upper-income residents neighbourhoods, and targeted Black and Latino neighbourhoods. 

The findings suggest PredPol technology is resulting in so-called 'feedback loops' in which lower-income, ethnic zones are treated as surveillance hotspots and lead to disproportionately higher numbers of arrests of minority populations.