The Home Office has pledged £5 million to support the
development of innovative technology to help police forces
prevent crime.
West Midlands Police will receive the grant to conduct
further testing on a data analysis system that analyses
large volumes of police-held data to assess the risk of
someone committing a crime or becoming a victim.
The programme is designed to support police officers and
does not replace their decision making.
During the first year of testing, the National Data
Analytics Solution (NDAS) used police data on knife and gun
offences and on those who have previously committed them to
identify patterns and common traits among perpetrators.
The programme has also drawn on information held in crime
reports and intelligence logs on instances of modern
slavery to identify common indicators of victims and the
networks that help enable this type of crime.
The funding comes from the Home Office’s Police
Transformation Fund and follows a £4.5 million grant
awarded in 2018 to 2019.
Home Secretary said:
I fully support the police embracing innovative new
technology in the fight against crime and to protect the
most vulnerable victims.
Anything we can do to stay one step ahead of the
criminals should be welcomed – providing it is rigorously
tested and ethically sound.
I look forward to seeing the results of this West
Midlands trial.
Once fully tested, it is hoped NDAS would be made available
to forces in England and Wales who want to use it to
improve their performance and to protect the public.
West Midlands Police are working with experts and
organisations to ensure robust ethical oversight as the
technology develops.
Superintendent Nick Dale, who leads on NDAS for West
Midlands Police, said:
This technology has the potential to help us understand
modern slavery networks – the hidden crime within our
communities – so much better, as well as the problems
that lead to serious violence that blights communities
and affects the lives of victims and perpetrators.
We are still at an early stage in identifying how best
machine learning technology can be used, but it is really
important that our work is scrutinised independently from
an ethical point of view, and that technology will never
replace professional judgement or affect the police’s
accountability for our actions.
NDAS is just one programme to benefit from a total Police
Transformation Fund pot of £175 million for 2019 to 2020,
announced as part of the police funding settlement in
December 2018.
Overseen by the Police Reform and Transformation Board
(PRTB), other beneficiaries include:
- a project transforming domestic abuse services run by
Northumbria Police
- the National Enabling Programme to help forces share
data more readily across force boundaries, led by City of
London Police
