Overview

Our Mission

Team GAHSP (Generating an Algorithm for Hot Spots Policing) is comprised of nine interdisciplinary sophomores under the University of Maryland's Gemstone Honors Program. Our team is passionate about remediating inequities within our current criminal justice system, particularly the prejudice and discrimination perpetuated by predictive policing algorithms.

Recently, police departments have begun adopting machine learning algorithms to aid in the allocation of police resources. While these algorithms are useful in predicting the course of violent crime, research has shown that these algorithms do nothing to solve racial (and socioeconomical) injustice. In fact, predictive policing algorithms allow departments to maintain all the same racially discriminatory policies, simply enacting these policies more efficiently. 

In light of this, our team seeks to create a new predictive policing algorithm that is able to account for proven racial bias when making its forecasts. Our team will integrate recent machine learning innovations with established criminological theory, synthesizing them so as to push police departments in a more socially conscious and equitable direction.

Our Request

To date, our team has conducted an exploratory and ongoing literature review and has formulated the prospective methodologies we will use to achieve our goal – to cleanse the historically racist data, and to build a more refined algorithm to feed this data into. It is at this point that we are looking to fund our ambitious project.

Any donations garnered from this campaign will go towards purchasing and maintaining databases, cloud computing, attending conferences, and travel expenses associated with interviews within both police departments and select diverse communities.

A donation of any amount would help us toward sharing our research with the widest audience possible, and if you can't make a donation, spreading the word helps us just as much. Thank you for your consideration!

Gifts in support of the University of Maryland are accepted and managed by the University of Maryland College Park Foundation, Inc., an affiliated 501(c)(3) organization authorized by the Board of Regents. Contributions to the University of Maryland are tax deductible as allowed by law. Please see your tax advisor for details.