Predictive policing: The risks associated with risk assessment
| Author | Litska Strikwerda |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X20947749 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
2021, Vol. 94(3) 422 –436
Article
Predictive policing:
The risks associated
with risk assessment
Litska Strikwerda
Faculty of Law, Open University, Utrecht, the Netherlands
Abstract
Focusing on the Dutch tools SyRI and CAS, this paper describes predictive policing
against the background of the broader development toward a pre-crime society, the
accompanying culture of control and the new penal logic it gives rise to. It will explain the
risks associated with the risk assessments predictive policing tools provide and end with
the recommendation to use predictive policing not only for police deployment, but also
to target problem-oriented responses to crime to the right persons and places.
Keywords
Predictive policing, pre-crime society, transparency
Introduction
This paper describes the phenomenon of predictive policing, focusing on two Dutch
predictive policing tools that recently generated a lot of public attention, namely: SyRI
and CAS. The Dutch government stopped using SyRI, a predictive policing tool for
predicting fraudsters, because the District Court of The Hague ruled it violates the right
to privacy as contained in article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (Rb.
Den Haag, 05-02-2020, ECLI: NL: RBDHA:2020:865, available at http://www.
rechtspraak.nl). The use of CAS, a predictive policing tool for predicting crime loca-
tions, just increased as it has been implemented nationwide since 2019 (Halfjaarbericht
politie 2019, bijlage 5: 3), making the Netherlands the first country in the world to deploy
predictive policing on a national scale.
It will be argued predictive policing is part of the broader development toward a pre-
crime society (Zedner, 2007), the accompanying culture of control (Garland, 2001) and
Corresponding author:
Litska Strikwerda, Faculty of Law, Open University, Vondellaan 202, 3521 GZ Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Email: litska.strikwerda@ou.nl
The Police Journal:
Theory, Practice and Principles
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0032258X20947749
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