As if they were stealing an idea from the Tom Cruise movie Minority Report or the TV show Person of Interest, police in Pennsylvania and Maryland are using computers to predict who will commit crimes before they actually occur.

The software is being used on freed prisoners to predict who is most likely to commit murder – and then giving these guys a bit of extra supervision.

Professor Richard Berk, a criminologist at the University of Pennsylvania who developed the software, says what matters most when making these predictions is what the person did when he/she was young.

For example, if they committed armed robbery at age 14, that’s a good predictor.

Read more: Wired.com