and that can be easily accommodated.
• A separate risk model is created for
each crime type enabling the technol-
ogy to have a unique configuration for
each agency and their jurisdictions that
use it
www.AmericanSecurityToday.com June 2019 - Edition 45
What data feeds into the crime risk
models?
• Missions
uses
historical and cur-
rent
ShotSpotter
detected gunfire
incidents, , other
crime
incidents,
calls for service,
seasonality,
time
of day, day of
week, census data,
upcoming events,
and
environmen-
tal features (e.g.,
density of bars,
density of vacant
parcels, etc.).
• ShotSpotter Missions does not in-
clude any race, educational, or home
ownership data from the census
• ShotSpotter Missions does not use
any personally identifiable informa-
tion (PII) about specific residents, such
as whether a neighborhood has a certain
number of parolees or sex offend-
ers.
• It is focused on creating risk assess-
ments for where and when crimes will
occur, , not who will commit the crime.
What kind of protections does Missions
have to avoid bias or discrimination?
• The company has incorporated new
technology and policy protections to
avoid bias or discrimination yet still
yield a significant public safety benefit.
• These protections include:
• Incorporating objective,
non-crime
data into risk models such as weath-
er, geospatial features such as density
of bars or vacant lots, event schedules,
census data and ShotSpotter verified
gunfire data
• Automatically randomizing
patrol
assignments to avoid oversaturating
high-risk areas and ensure that lower
risk areas receive adequate crime de-
terrence treatment
• The company has made a policy deci-
sion to not allow the system to cre-
ate risk assessment models for crime
types that are susceptible to enforce-
ment bias.
• This can occur when police presence in
an area can lead to more crime being
recorded in that area which in turn can
create runaway feedback loops that
will continually return police to the
same area.
• In addition, Missions does not use
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