Essential Guide: Uk Is Shaping A Future Of Precrime And Dissent Management 2026

The UK is expanding its use of predictive policing and surveillance, framing it as a response to crime, protest, and public safety. But the direction is clear: more monitoring, earlier intervention, and more control over dissent.

In early April, The Guardian revealed that the Ministry of Justice is developing a “murder prevention” system. The tool aims to identify individuals judged to be at high risk of committing lethal violence, based on data drawn from multiple agencies—social care, policing, education. The government has framed the project as a research initiative to improve risk assessments and early intervention. But its underlying logic marks a shift toward ‘precrime’—managing individuals on the basis of what they might do, rather than what they’ve done.

The comparison to Minority Report—Philip K. Dick’s 1956 story, later adapted into a 2002 film—is hard to avoid. In both, people are flagged not by witnesses or evidence, but by prediction systems that turn patterns into verdicts. Dick’s vision included ‘precogs’—human oracles housed by the state—while today’s version relies on datasets and AI algorithms. In both, the future is treated as knowable, and the present is shaped around managing that future in advance.

Notably, overall crime rates in England and Wales have been falling for decades. According to the Office for National Statistics, incidents have dropped from nearly 20 million in the mid-1990s to under 5 million in recent years. Homicide levels have followed a similar decline, with 594 recorded in the year ending March 2021—far below their peak in the early 2000s. Only 35 of those involved firearms. The relative rarity of such violence raises questions about why a predictive “murder prevention” system is being pursued now.

At the same time, police forces face severe financial pressure. The Metropolitan Police is planning to cut 1,700 officers and staff to cover a £260 million budget gap. Other forces face similar cuts. But rather than scaling back, policing is being reorganised—away from visible presence and toward data-driven surveillance, algorithmic profiling, and anticipatory enforcement.

The Crime and Policing Bill 2025 reinforces this direction. It allows police to access DVLA-held driver licence records for law enforcement purposes. While the Home Office denies any link to facial recognition, civil liberties groups have raised concerns that this access could be repurposed—effectively turning the DVLA database into a foundation f

Source: HackerNews