ABSTRACT
This chapter situates predictive policing within larger trajectories of innovations in police work and crime prevention. The emergence of predictive policing, as the chapter illustrates, must be understood in light of general tendencies to render policing more future oriented, scientifically informed, and data driven. Moreover, it must be seen within a lineage of crime prevention strategies since the 1970s, including the likes of community policing, problem-oriented policing, hot-spot policing, and intelligence-led policing. The chapter proceeds to present an overview of different approaches to predictive policing. Differentiating between person-based and place-based approaches, it details different strategies for how data, theories, and models can be mobilized to come up with statements about possible futures. Overall, predictive policing, so we argue, presents yet another step in a rather long history of efforts to render police work more effective and efficient. There is considerable continuity in the ways in which police organizations seek to predict and address the future. Predictive policing should, in summary, be understood as an evolution rather than a revolution – however, as an evolution that nonetheless bears the potential to fundamentally reconfigure organizational routines and policing practices.
