Matt Ashby

I help people use data to reduce crime. Associate Professor at @UCLCrimeScience. Former police officer.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@AaronSchein @BrendanNyhan @ChenhaoTan One recent example: https://t.co/sy8Owzblwu

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@AaronSchein @BrendanNyhan @ChenhaoTan Given the many papers I have seen in criminology journals in which the core idea was absolutely not worth reading (or writing) about, I’m not sure that signal is all that strong.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@Edweirdian @akoustov I would say that if an RA makes a mistake and that mistake gets as far as embarrassing other authors, the person supervising the RA isn’t doing their job properly. I think the same applies to AI tools. They can be useful, but their output always needs to be checked.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@hpenatzer Might that be caused by the Zotero add-in for Word? When I want to cite a paper I just paste the DOI into Zotero, it grabs all the details from Crossref then Quarto takes the citation from there automatically. But I have no idea how the Word add-in works because I don’t use Word.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@Edweirdian @akoustov Much like working with a human RA/TA, I wouldn’t get AI to do anything where I couldn’t easily check if it was wrong. But that still leaves enough things for which it is useful that I use it almost every day in my research and teaching.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@longitude0 @DefenceHQ They have to train in all weathers because they might have to fight in any weather. There’d obviously be little point in having naval helicopter pilots whose only experience of flying was in good weather.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@James_Treadwell Yes, I think the level of use of force being less than expected is probably my takeaway as well. That could obviously be the product of quite a few things, including football violence being less common than previously and police potentially being more restrained.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

Men's professional football matches in London led to real but small increases in police use of force in the local area. The typical effect of a match was that there were 0.77 more uses of force in a borough on a match day than would be expected otherwise.

https://t.co/Bwv6kCp9rh

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

Most street violence occurs in a small number of hotspots. New research shows hotspots (🇺🇸) are connected by (the same offenders using) the same weapons across hotspots, with nearby hotspots and those with similar ethnic makeup being more connected.

https://t.co/2YS8iM7MwO

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@BrokenBarnet That’s interesting. When I’ve seen them doing this, it’s always been the same bright red vans with a big rack of equipment on the roof. Do you have any pictures?

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@BrokenBarnet If you were filmed during a police live facial recognition operation, you would very likely have been aware of it – they use a bright red van that has ‘live facial recognition’ written on it. They also put signs up on the street. Is it possible you were filmed by somebody else?

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@BrokenBarnet I agree that the question of value for money needs more work. The level of intrusion, though, is minimal: the false-positive rate is very low, and if a person’s face doesn’t match a face on the list of wanted offenders, the picture is deleted immediately.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

Interesting framework on how police (🇬🇧) are likely to use different AI tools in future, and the different ethical and reputational issues that creates. Good to see the Met having this debate at least somewhat in public.

https://t.co/zj9p1rnChs

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

Routine arming of police (🇦🇺) didn’t lead to any change in the rate at which police shot people.

This study doesn’t look at other potential consequences such as officer suicides using their firearm, which has been a consistent problem in Australia.

https://t.co/gsbOiA0aj9

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@k3nnysm1th @JJSharpers No. Detaining a violent suspect normally takes more than one officer, for a start.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@GazTheJourno Not sure I understand how this is TfL’s fault? They don’t operate the tunnels that flooded. Obviously the Piccadilly line was coincidentally closed for engineering works, but they have to do engineering works some time and could hardly have known the tunnel was going to flood.

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

Police body-worn video recordings (🇺🇸) were associated with faster investigation times and (for some crime types, e.g. domestic abuse) less chance of prosecutors discontinuing a case, but little change in the likelihood of conviction.

https://t.co/xDBJugiQGG

[Matt Ashby @LessCrime]

@ChelseaBridgeWh @tomcopley @oldoakparkroyal @howarddawber @KarenPBuckQP If London boroughs were good at working together on projects, quite a few current London problems that wouldn’t exist. Sadly, they aren’t generally much good at working together. Hence the need for mayoral development corporations.