Knowing where a criminal will strike next is a vital tool to any law enforcement agency. Police in Los Angeles have been testing software that can predict where burglaries are most likely to happen. Built by Predpol, a start-up copmany based in Santa Cruz, California, the software uses time and location data from previous reports and mixes it with sociological studies of criminal behavior that show that criminals like to hit the same areas more than once. Seeing a cop car tends to deter future crimes.