The Ministry of Justice is developing a ‘dystopian’ system that aims to predict who might commit murder, as part of a data science project using sensitive personal details from hundreds of thousands of people across the country.

Originally known as the ‘homicide prediction project’, Government researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to dissect mounds of personal data in the hope of identifying those most at risk of committing murder in future.

The project, a collaboration between the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the Home Office, Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and the Metropolitan Police in London, has come to light following freedom of information requests from civil liberties non-profit Statewatch, and was first reported by the Guardian. 

The FOI requests provided to Statewatch showed that the Data Sharing Agreement between the MoJ and GMP notes that data from between 100,000 and 500,000 people was shared to develop the tool, including names, dates of birth, ethnicity and gender.

Added to that, Statewatch claims that the data also includes information on people in vulnerable situations, with the MoJ stating that ‘health markers’ data was expected to have ‘significant predictive power’. 

This allegedly includes data on people’s mental health, addiction, self-harm, suicide, vulnerability, and disabilities, as well as data on hundreds of thousands of suspects, victims, witnesses, missing people, and people for whom there are safeguarding concerns.

In the documents obtained by Statewatch, which includes the MoJ Data Protection Impact Assessment, Internal Risk Assessment and Data Sharing Agreement with GMP, the MOJ writes that the scheme is intended to “[e]xplore the power of MOJ datasets in relation to assessment of homicide risk,” with a data science team looking to develops predictive models that would be operationalised in future.

According to the Government, the project, since renamed ‘sharing data to improve risk assessment’, was only at a research level, with the MOJ telling the Guardian that the initiative will “review offender characteristics that increase the risk of committing homicide” and “provide evidence towards improving risk assessment of serious crime, and ultimately contribute to protecting the public via better analysis”.

Sources subsequently told the Register that the plan is an expansion of the risk-predicting tech already in use, such as the Offender Assessment System (OASys), which crunches data on those approaching release from prison to ‘predict’ the possibility of reoffending. 

Statewatch said that these tools have allegedly been found to profile people from different ethnicities differently, and called for an immediate halt to any further development of new systems, saying that the use of police force and judicial data risks reinforcing racism and discrimination within the criminal legal system, potentially ‘coding in’ bias towards racialised and low-income communities.

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“Time and again, research shows that algorithmic systems for ‘predicting’ crime are inherently flawed. Yet the government is pushing ahead with AI systems that will profile people as criminals before they’ve done anything,” said Sofia Lyall, a researcher for Statewatch.

“Instead of throwing money towards developing dodgy and racist AI and algorithms, the government must invest in genuinely supportive welfare services. Making welfare cuts while investing in techno-solutionist ‘quick fixes’ will only further undermine people’s safety and wellbeing.”

The report from Statewatch echoes research published by Amnesty International just weeks ago, which revealed what the humanitarian organisation called ‘dangerous discrimination’ in police prediction technology.

Amnesty found that 33 UK police forces have used predictive profiling or risk prediction systems, while 32 have also deployed geographic crime prediction tools, raising serious human rights concerns for racialised communities.