Santa Cruz, California, has become the first city in the United States to outright ban the use of predictive policing algorithms as law enforcement faces national scrutiny over systemic racism and data-driven tools. While a handful of local governments have recently placed moratoriums on facial recognition systems, predictive policing technology also risks quietly eroding constitutional rights and exacerbating existing racial and economic biases. The technology uses algorithms to analyse massive amounts of data to predict the times, locations, potential perpetrators, and prospective victims of future crimes. This approach represents an evolution of long-established criminology techniques, with the idea of forecasting crimes originating in 1931 with University of Chicago sociologist Clifford R.

Background: Predictive Policing and Risk Scoring

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