Stop funding predictive policing tech without ‘evidence standards,’ lawmakers tell DOJ – By Edward Graham (Nextgov) / Jan 29, 2024
Seven Democrats are urging Attorney General Merrick Garland to cease grant funding for predictive policing systems until DOJ ensures they are not having “a discriminatory impact.”
Democrats in both chambers of Congress are calling for the Department of Justice to halt grant funding for predictive policing systems until the agency ensures “that grant recipients will not use such systems in ways that have a discriminatory impact.”
In a Jan. 29 letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, seven lawmakers — including Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Alex Padilla, D-Calif., Peter Welch, D-Vt., John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Edward Markey, D-Mass. — wrote that “mounting evidence indicates that predictive policing technologies do not reduce crime” and instead “worsen the unequal treatment of Americans of color by law enforcement.”
Predictive policing systems use historical data to determine where crimes are most likely to occur, often resulting in higher levels of neighborhood-specific policing. But the lawmakers said the data used to power the underlying algorithms in these technologies is “distorted by falsified crime reports and disproportionate arrests of people of color.”
