Minority Report, the 2002 Spielberg film starring Tom Cruise, depicts a world in which police are able to foresee crimes before they happen. Photo / Getty Images
Criminals in Britain could be stopped before they strike under Minority Report-style policing plans.
Police chiefs are evaluating around 100 projects in which officers are trialling the use of AI to help combat crime.
The expanded use of AI and technology by police – with the aim of putting the “eyes of the state” on criminals “at all times” – is expected to be part of police reforms by Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, in a white paper next week.
In an interview with the Telegraph, Andy Marsh, the head of the College of Policing, said one of three key uses was “predictive analytics” to target criminals before they strike.
He is proposing to use the technology to identify and target the 1000 most dangerous predatory men who pose the highest risk to women and girls in England and Wales.
“We know the data and case histories tell us that, unfortunately, it’s far from uncommon for these individuals to move from one female victim to another, and we understand all of the difficulties of bringing successful cases to bear in court,” he said.
“So what we want to do is use these predictive tools to take the battle to those individuals, so that they are the ones who are frightened because the police are coming after them and we’re going to lock them up.”
Minority Report, the 2002 Steven Spielberg film, depicts a futuristic world in which police forces are able to foresee crimes before they happen and arrest would-be perpetrators.
The British Government is investing £4 million ($9.3m) in creating an interactive AI-driven map of England and Wales by 2030 that aims to stop criminals before they strike.
The project will use official data to identify areas likely to see criminal activity such as knife offences, or spot early warnings of anti-social behaviour so police can intervene before it escalates.
Marsh said AI was being deployed to analyse data and intelligence to identify the communities most vulnerable to crime so police patrols could be targeted on them.
He also said it would make officers more efficient, with them spending less time on form-filling and bureaucracy and more time bringing criminals to justice.
The controversy over West Midlands police’s handling of its AI search for information about alleged Israeli football fan violence – which produced false claims of a non-existent match – has threatened public confidence in officers’ use of the technology.
Mahmood told MPs that AI was an “incredibly powerful tool that can and should be used by our police forces” but said it needed to be regulated in a way that was “always accurate”.
Guidelines for its use are expected to be set out in her white paper on police reform.
As Justice Secretary, Mahmood proposed a major expansion of GPS tagging of criminals to create “virtual prisons” for offenders punished in the community.
Since moving to the Home Office, she has announced a planned nationwide rollout of police-operated live facial recognition cameras.
In an interview with former Prime Minister Tony Blair last month, she said: “AI and technology can be transformative to the whole of the law-and-order space. When I was in justice, my ultimate vision for that part of the criminal justice system was to achieve, by means of AI and technology, what Jeremy Bentham tried to do with his Panopticon.
“That is that the eyes of the state can be on you at all times. Similarly, in the world of policing, in particular, we’ve already been rolling out live facial recognition technology, but I think there’s big space here for being able to harness the power of AI and tech to get ahead of the criminals, frankly, which is what we’re trying to do.”
Bentham, an 18th-century philosopher and social theorist, promoted the Panopticon as a circular prison with a central inspection tower from which a single guard could observe all inmates all the time while unseen.
A government source said: “This doesn’t mean watching people who are non-criminals. But she feels like, if you commit a crime, you sacrifice the right to the kind of liberty the rest of us enjoy.”
The V1000 plan to target the 1000 most dangerous predators of women is modelled on a V100 scheme launched by the Met in March 2023. By last November, it had seen some 193 perpetrators charged with 2395 offences, including rape, grievous bodily harm. and attempted murder.
Marsh said: “This year, we [the College of Policing] have got across 1400 innovative practices, and somewhere in the region of 100 of them are AI-related. And our job is to test the ones that work properly, test them with rigorous evaluation, and then spread them like wildfire through policing.”
“AI assistants” are being trialled by frontline officers in Greater Manchester to provide them with instant access to current criminal law and national guidance when they attend domestic violence incidents.
This includes guidance on how to deal with counter-allegations at a crime scene, help prepare an interview plan with a suspect by distilling key information “saving hours of work” and ensure they properly present court applications for domestic violence prevention orders, which could “make the difference between life or death”.
“If you were to spend 24 hours on the shoulder of a sergeant currently, you would be disappointed at the amount of time that the sergeant spends checking and not patrolling, leading and protecting,” Marsh said.
“We think that it will save many tens of thousands, if not many hundreds of thousands, of hours and deliver far better quality policing.”
New AI tools are also being trialled to speed up redaction and searching of videos.
One AI search system, currently being tested by two forces, is being fast-tracked because it is able to find suspects in hours of CCTV, mobile phone or doorbell cam footage 60% faster than any previous technology.
Marsh said it could mean police would be able to search more CCTV, including for lower-level crimes.
“If it works as well as we think it does, with a 60% saving, we will not only be able to do it more quickly, more cheaply, but also lower the bar at which we’re able to apply this to solve crime,” he said.
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