The UK government is working on a new programme, which aims to predict potential offenders capable of committing serious crimes. The programme, 'Murder Prediction,' will use the data of people already with the authorities to identify those at high risk of becoming murderers.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said the project would help improve public safety by using algorithms to analyse data from multiple people. The government will identify patterns and risk factors to predict and prevent serious crimes.
Although the government hopes the research will help the justice system, critics argue it could lead to privacy violations.
Statewatch, a UK-based civil rights group, said the data would also be collected for people who haven't committed any crime, The Guardian reported. It said the authorities would use sensitive information like if they have gone to the police for help or have ever self-harmed or been involved in domestic abuse.
Sofia Lyall, a researcher with Statewatch, criticised the project, describing it as "chilling and dystopian." She said, "This latest model, which uses data from our institutionally racist police and Home Office, will reinforce and magnify the structural discrimination underpinning the criminal legal system."
She added that like other systems of its kind, it would code in bias towards racialised and low-income communities. "Building an automated tool to profile people as violent criminals is deeply wrong, and using such sensitive data on mental health, addiction, and disability is highly intrusive and alarming," she added.
The government claimed the project will use data from people with at least one criminal conviction.
As of now, the initiative is in the research phase and has not yet been put into practice, it said.
Critics fear the data being used may result in unfair bias, particularly against poor people and ethnic minorities.
According to the MoJ, the programme was started under former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and would "examine alternative and innovative data science techniques to risk assessment of homicide" and "review offender characteristics that increase the risk of committing homicide."
The project is being conducted for research purposes only, the ministry added. It has been designed using existing data held by HM Prison and Probation Service and police forces on convicted offenders to help us better understand the risk of people on probation going on to commit serious violence, it added.
