The potential that data provides for government is, in many cases, still only just becoming apparent. For the police, data can help them respond to crime before it happens. The technology has promise, but also a dark side.   

“Predictive policing is the application of statistics and big data to the challenge of figuring out where or how to deploy police assets in advance of crime trends,” says Patrick Tucker, technology editor at Defense One.

He cites both New York and Memphis as examples of how the system has been used.

In Memphis, a researcher partnered with the police to pre-deploy resources to neighborhoods where they expected crime, and in their efforts discovered that being in public housing increased the chances of crime victimization, but not likelihood of committing crime, which to a change in strategy.

In New York, one component of predictive policing was the” stop and frisk” program, which, according to Tucker, was not a good use of the statistics because it did not substantially reduce the crime rate and was later found to be illegal.