Criminal Behavior And Social Media Analysis

Today in 2018, one issue in particular seems to be at the forefront of the minds of Americans all across the United States. It is an issue that has always been relevant, yet due to a rise in violence, crime, and the number of individuals who are fed up and speak out about it, the issue of safety is causing parents to keep their children home from schools. It is causing individuals everywhere to become increasingly untrusting of the authorities who are supposed to protect them. It causes mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, friends, and family of all kinds to worry daily about their loved ones. At a time when we are constantly bombarded with news reports discussing the most recent shooting, or riot, or violent outbreak of any sort, people question …show more content…
However, crime prediction is shifting from utilizing outdated and discriminatory means of collecting data, to new and ethical means. For example, in an effort to reduce unethical crime prediction, crime predicting teams regularly use Twitter as an indicator of crime (Brown). According to study published in the scholarly journal, Science Direct, “For 19 out of 25 crimes, Twitter data improves crime prediction performance versus the standard approach”(Gerber). This method is an unbiased way of gathering data. By utilizing a social media database, predictive technologies search for keywords rather than factors that often characterize minority communities. In addition to Twitter and other social media platforms, mobile data captures human behavioral data that aids in crime prediction (Bogomolov). When crime prediction was introduced (around the 1970s) crime prediction teams did not have the resources we do today in order to ethically predict crime. They only had records of things such as educational deficiencies, poor employment, and residential instability to rely on. Because of a disproportion in opportunity in the U.S., this type of information tended to characterize minority communities, making them more susceptible to victimization by crime prediction systems, and therefore targeting and burdening these neighborhoods (Wasserman). Today, because an individual's behavior can be examined through what they put on social media or what messages/emails they send, crime prediction teams no longer have to rely on a discriminatory system. Not only are the current prediction technologies more ethical, but they are also effective. Approximately 84% of crime prediction targets are accurate (Rizwan). By shifting our crime prediction technologies, crime prediction