A new report from Amnesty International has revealed what the humanitarian organisation calls  ‘dangerous discrimination’ in police prediction technology.

The study, Automated Racism – How Police Data and Algorithms Code Discrimination into Policing, exposes the potential dangers of predictive policing systems and tech that is currently used across almost three quarters of the UK’s police forces.  

Amnesty found that 33 police forces, including the UK’s largest, the Met, have used predictive profiling or risk prediction systems, while 32 have also deployed geographic crime prediction tools, and 11 have used additional individual profiling systems.

According to the report, there are two main types of predictive policing systems that raise human rights concerns. 

The first are location-based tools, which make predictions about the likelihood of crimes being committed in geographic locations in the future. Amnesty argues that these systems, in all locations, specifically target racialised communities, finding that in the year ending March 2023 there were 24.5 stops and searches for every 1,000 Black people, 8.5 for every 1,000 Asian people – and just 5.9 for every 1,000 white people. 

Amnesty said that racialised people are over-represented in stop and search compared to their representation in the population, or even their involvement in police records of crime, due to the use of geographic predictive systems leading to heightened police activity in particular locations.

Citing just one example of the impact of such technology, Amnesty found that the West Midlands Police use of crime mapping tools to predict knife offences and serious violence had influenced racial profiling and discriminatory policing, with the force using stop and search measures on Black people almost five times as much as white people.     

The report also highlights the impact of individual predictive policing, or profiling, which use systems that focus on individuals, seeking to predict their likelihood or risk of certain behaviours.

Police in the UK use these systems to give individuals a risk score, which can then influence whether an individual is more closely monitored or even subjected to additional policing, such as questioning or stop and search.

Amnesty claims that these databases of individuals are overly focused on racialised people, who go on to be repeatedly targeted by police and therefore crop up in those later police records, which may be adding to an ongoing cycle of prejudice.

For example, Amnesty claims that Greater Manchester Police’s gang profiling database is based on suspicion and ‘perception’, without objective evidence of offending, or even any evidence of offending at all.

According to the study the disproportionate representation of Black and racialised people on the ‘gang profiling’ XCalibre database is discriminatory and evidence of the racial profiling that XCalibre conducts, with the organisation arguing it also acts as an infringement of people’s right to freedom of association.

Amnesty said that the use of such technology results in human rights violations, including the increased criminalisation and punishment that disproportionately targets Black and racialised people and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

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“The use of predictive policing tools violates human rights,” said Sacha Deshmukh, chief executive at Amnesty International UK.

“The evidence that this technology keeps us safe just isn’t there, the evidence that it violates our fundamental rights is clear as day.

“The UK Government must prohibit the use of these technologies across England and Wales as should the devolved governments in Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

“Right now, they can demand transparency on how these systems are being used. People and communities subjected to these systems must have the right to know about them and have meaningful routes to challenge policing decisions made using them.”

Amnesty’s report calls for a prohibition on predictive policing systems, and the introduction of transparency and accountability obligations for the data-based and data-driven systems used by police forces.