'Dystopian' tool aims to predict murderers

The government is developing a "murder prediction" programme that it hopes can use the personal data of those known to the authorities to identify the people most likely to become killers.

- Vikram Dodd

Researchers are alleged to be using algorithms to analyse the information of thousands of people, including victims of crime, as they try to identify those at greatest risk of committing serious violent offences.

The scheme was originally called the "homicide prediction project", but its name has been changed to "sharing data to improve risk assessment". The Ministry of Justice hopes the project will help increase public safety but campaigners have called it "chilling and dystopian".

The existence of the project was discovered by the pressure group Statewatch, and some of its workings were uncovered through documents obtained by freedom of information requests. Statewatch says data from people not convicted of any criminal offence will be used as part of the project, including personal information about self-harm and details relating to domestic abuse.

Officials strongly deny this, insisting that only data about people with at least one guilty conviction has been used.

The government says the project is at present for research only, but campaigners claim the data used would build bias into the predictions against minority ethnic and poor people.