Melanie’s Reviews > The Monsters We Make: Murder, Obsession, and the Rise of Criminal Profiling > Status Update

What is takeaway point/purpose of this book?

"This book is...my struggle to understand the problem [my father] represents in me. In profiling, we see people as we need them to be, even if it blinds us to the ambiguities of reality."

"The problem with predictive policing is the policing part" - Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, prof at American University. Analytics to ID at-risk youth can be useful but funding should go to better-equipped social service agencies.

In 2011, Time magazine called predictive policing 1 of 50 greatest inventions of the year.

"It's more accurate to say that algorithms reflect policing patterns rather than crime patterns."

"What we measure affects what we look for and read as important."

Inputs that classify "high crime" might come from old arrest figures that are artificially elevated (stop & frisk, excessive pot charges in Black areas, etc.)

- Behaviors in hunting among ancient humans look like those of modern-day car thieves
- Habits of earthquakes (with aftershocks following main event) match those of gang activity (murders often followed by a retaliation)

Brantingham + LAPD repurposed earthquake-forecasting methodologies & algorithm to analyze police data on past LA crimes and predict where they'd occur next; led to 7.4% reduction in crime [2/2]

1990s - philosophical shift in criminal policing; "instead of merely reacting to individual 'incidents,' police must proactively solve general problems." Result was new data-sharing network among federal, local, & state agencies w/ dozens of hubs around country known as fusion centers.

Jeffrey Brantingham - UCLA anthropologist, developed math models, found algorithms for 1 purpose can apply to a very diff one [1/2]

CompStat - focused energy on neighborhoods where crimes clustered. "Act small to prevent big" (broken windows policing, also applied to counterterrorism - focus on small immigration infractions to increase odds of ensnaring big time terrorists).

School resource officers were often the first to ID vulnerable youth; SHOULD offer services to get them back on track, but often responsible for some of the most aggressive policing in the county.

Juveniles put on secret list of "prolific offenders" (at-risk + history of criminally-related interactions) were relentlessly pursued and prosecuted, and tried as adults so they'd be locked up for max amt possible.

"Scoring system" for kids -

- Evidence of criminal past (arrest records, gang activity)
- Bad grades, missing school, socializing with delinquent friends
- Sometimes entirely out of their control (incarcerated parent, being a victim of abuse, witnessing household violence)
- Used the database of child welfare/abuse history from FL Dept of Children & Families to ID kids who had "adverse childhood experiences"

[2/2]

How they IDed "seeds of criminal activity":

- Most juvenile offenders came from "abusive, neglectful, or otherwise disadvantaged upbringings"
- 40% of juvenile offenders had witnessed violence at home, 80% had incarcerated parent (never mind that that same paper concluded that therapy is more cost-effective with better outcomes & less crime than policing).

[1/2]