Is an AI ‘HART’ the future of Law enforcement?

Durham Police may start using AI to help make custody decisions in as little as “two to three months”, according to Sheena Urwin, Head of Criminal Justice at Durham Constabulary.

The Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) assesses whether suspects are of a low, medium or high-risk, ultimately advising officers as to whether or not the suspect should remain in custody.

Tests show that Hart’s predictions for low-risk suspects were 98% correct, and 88% correct when assessing high-risk suspects. Hart also factors in the level of the crime, as well as any previous convictions that a suspect may have.

Hart was trained using Durham’s police records between 2008 and 2012, and starting in 2013, it’s decisions on whether or not the suspects were offenders, were monitored for two years.

It’s better to be safe than sorry: studies show that Hart is slightly on the paranoid side, if not just cautious, as it is more likely to define someone as medium or high-risk than low-risk.

Although the android is only to be used as an advisory in randomly selected cases, there are some risks associated with the use of Hart.

Firstly, as Hart was trained with human insight, there is a fear that it could take on the bias of its programmers: in previous cases, Ai has been know to adopt racist views, inherited from its programmers.

Secondly, it is possible that Hart’s decisions could sway the presiding officer’s decisions. As I am sure you know, we humans have a tendency to trust the results of google more than we trust our own calculations: Dr Google vs real doctors.

Despite these reservations, Hart is just an advisory and it will have human oversight. So, not to worry; I don’t think it’s ready to make a 25 to life decision just yet.

Durham’s consideration of using AI could be the first of many police departments across the country, and whilst Hart is limited -having only seen police records from Durham- the next logical step would be AI training using national Police records.

JamieAi is the smart job board for Data Scientists to match and connect with great job opportunities. Find out more at www.jamieai.com