AI-generated summary
The True Crime Hackathon is a format in which interdisciplinary teams work to solve complex, unsolved criminal cases within a short period of time. It comes from the Netherlands, where it has been successfully carried out by the police and public prosecutor's office for several years.
Police stations and public prosecutors in Saxony-Anhalt want to find new approaches to unsolved cases on Friday with the help of creative ideas from external experts. 30 participants, including from the fields of psychology, natural sciences, medicine and computer science, will come together on Friday at the Weinberg Campus in Halle for the first “True Crime Hackathon”.
Specifically, the teams should work on new solutions for five different cases, said Karina Wessel, spokeswoman for the Central Services Police Inspectorate in Magdeburg. These include homicides, cybercrime, cases of white-collar crime and so-called “cold cases”, i.e. investigations that have been unsolved for a long time.
One participant is traveling from Switzerland
By the end of July, more than 800 interested parties had applied for the format. «That surprised us. We expected around 200 applications,” says Wessel. The selected participants come primarily from Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia, but also from North Rhine-Westphalia and Hamburg. According to the police spokeswoman, a participant even came from Switzerland. Some of them are “real luminaries in their field”.
The format comes from the Netherlands. The “Police Hackathon” has been successfully implemented there by the public prosecutor’s office and the police for several years and is taking place for the sixth time in October. It is also said that a Dutch police representative will be involved on site in Saxony-Anhalt, where the hackathon is having its premiere.
The term “hackathon” comes from the IT industry and is a combination of the terms “hacking” and “marathon”. At events like this, teams work to solve complex problems within a short period of time.
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