CHICAGO · PREDICTIVE POLICING

The Strategic Subject List assigned people risk scores for becoming a victim or offender in a shooting.

OIG: unreliable scores and tiers among major concerns

WHERE

Chicago · Cook County · IL

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CPD spent years developing the Strategic Subject List and its successor, the Crime and Victimization Risk Model, with $3.8 million in federal grants. The models attempted to predict whether a person would become a “party to violence”—either a victim or an offender in a shooting.

Chicago OIG identified concerns including unreliable risk scores and tiers, inadequate training, weak controls over internal and external access, and interventions that could attach negative consequences to arrests that never resulted in convictions. CPD decommissioned the program in 2019.

Why it matters: A numerical score can look objective even when the underlying model, data, or meaning of the score is much less certain.

Sources: Chicago OIG summary · OIG advisory

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