@philosophyminis: In Steven Spielberg's movie 'Minority Report', special police units arrest people for crimes they have not yet committed. And while the movie is set in 2054, we do not have to wait that long, because predictive policing is here. This is how it works. First, a police department will feed various crime data into an algorithm, incident reports, criminal demographics, and so on. The algorithm looks for patterns and generates predictions. It tells operators where a crime is likely to take place and even who is likely to commit it. In theory, this allows police to prevent crime before it happens — send officers to a certain area, increase surveillance on certain people, and you can reduce crime and protect the victim. But there are two problems with this, a philosophical one and a technological one. The technological problem is that this will almost always amplify existing biases. The data a police department feeds into their algorithm already has biases, and then overpolicing and overreporting data increases those biases further. The philosophical issue is that punishment has to be tied to choice. Aristotle argued that moral responsibility requires two things, you must know what you are doing, and you must choose to do it. But the so-called ‘pre-crime’ removes both of those. The person does not know they are going to commit a crime because they have not yet decided to do one. But punishment is not always about the wrongdoer. It is about society more broadly. And if it creates a safer and happier world, is predictive policing that wrong? If it is better for more people most of the time, should we punish people before they do something wrong?

Jonny Thomson

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Tuesday 14 April 2026 13:34:53 GMT