Lawmakers call on Justice Department to defund predictive policing technology

A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling on the Justice Department to suspend funding for predictive policing technology unless authorities can show the technology meets standards for accuracy and effectiveness.

In a letter released Monday, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rep. Yvette Clark (N.Y.), and a group of five other senators asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to In response, it called for an end to all Department of Justice funding for predictive policing systems. The Department can ensure that grant recipients do not use the system in a “discriminatory” nature.

Predictive policing takes data from various sources for analysis and uses the results to predict future crimes.

Lawmakers say these predictive policing systems rely on data that is “skewed by falsified crime reports and disproportionate arrests of people of color,” leading to lower crime rates in Black and Latino neighborhoods. He argued that this could lead to over-predicting crime in white areas and under-predicting crime in white areas.

“There is growing evidence that predictive policing technology does not reduce crime; instead, it exacerbates the unequal treatment of Americans of color by law enforcement,” the members wrote.

“Continued use of systems like this creates a dangerous feedback loop, where biased predictions are used to justify unwarranted stops and arrests in minority areas, where crime is occurring. This makes the statistics even more biased.”

Citing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the members argued that programs that use Justice Department funds to discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, or national origin are “unlawful.” Members called on the Department of Justice to ensure that the system complies with this statute and to provide an analysis of the system’s accuracy and risk.

The letter comes more than two years after Mr. Wyden and Mr. Clark first sent a letter to the Justice Department asking whether it would fund these systems. Wyden argued that the Justice Department’s response, nearly a year after the investigation, did not answer in detail lawmakers’ questions about how much federal funding was going into the technology.

At the time, the Justice Department acknowledged that it did not keep “specific records” on which agencies used federal funds for predictive policing systems.

The Hill has reached out to the Department of Justice for comment.