Future-focused police innovation: Strategic crime hackathon yields groundbreaking results in Lower Saxony
Lower Saxony Police Hosts Innovative True Crime Hackathon
The Lower Saxony Police recently organised the True Crime Hackathon in 2023, aiming to present itself as an innovative and modern employer and to develop innovative solutions for police procedures and criminal investigations. The event took place at the modern conference center of the Lower Saxony Police, with the Innovation Hub serving as the hub for the Hackathon.
Oskar Neda, head of the Innovation Hub, stated that an external fresh perspective can be beneficial for reviving exhausted investigative leads and streamlining workflows. Marius Bornschier from the Innovation Hub further emphasised that the goal of the True Crime Hackathon is to identify and utilise new ideas to expand their own horizon and bring these ideas to police practice.
The Hackathon attracted 58 participants from various fields across the country, including software developers, computer science students, physicists, and teaching staff. These participants worked in small groups, evaluating and analyzing selected contents from case files to describe substantiated hypotheses.
One of the notable teams, "Digipro", developed a device-independent web application for digitizing the "Minutes of Search, Seizure, and Confiscation" form. This web application simplified the form based on mentor feedback and allows for new cases to be added, old cases to be edited, evidence photos to be taken, barcodes to be scanned, and signatures to be collected directly in the application.
The event also focused on engaging external students and creative minds with police topics. The three best teams from each focus theme were awarded a prize and monetary award. For further inquiries, contact Finny Petermann at the Central Police Directorate of Lower Saxony via email at [email protected] or telephone at 0511/9695 1070.
The True Crime Hackathon has new approaches for investigative work in cold cases. These hypotheses can be further processed in investigative groups. The Lower Saxony Police continues to strive for innovation and modernisation in its approach to policing, as demonstrated by the successful True Crime Hackathon.
For more information about the Lower Saxony Police, visit their official website at http://www.polizei.niedersachsen.de/dst/zpd/.
