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Advanced statistics have revolutionized the way sports teams do business and now Saskatoon police are hoping a new lab doing the same kind of data analysis can help stop crimes before they happen.

“The lab is going to help validate a cop’s instincts,” Deputy Chief Bernie Pannell told reporters at a news conference Thursday.

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Police officers, Pannell said, have piles of data stored away in notebooks and crime sheets. Most of it, he says, isn’t ever used the way it could be. Now with the help of some computer scientists and mathematicians from the University of Saskatchewan, police are hoping that data will help predict and even prevent crime.

“We are limited only by our imagination as to the kinds of things we might take on in this lab,” said Stephen Wormith, professor and director, centre for forensic behavioural science and justice studies at the University of Saskatchewan.

Wormith’s team has already studied data on people inside Saskatchewan jails and whether they are likely to reoffend once released.