This expert system was developed for the Baltimore County Police Department by the Jefferson Institute for Justice Studies to assist the investigation of residential burglaries in the late 1980s.
[1][2] In the United States, the use of artificial intelligence in form of expert systems for crime investigation was primarily driven by the FBI in the 1980s.
Securing the grant, the Jefferson Institute for Justice Studies developed further the Devon and Cornwall constabulary system for the police department of Baltimore County, Maryland.
[3] Residential burglary is a volume crime with a large number of offenses, often serial offenders and a relatively low detection rate.
Core of the software was the knowledge accumulated by officers of the Baltimore County Police Department in burglary cases.
[7] REBES was transferred to the police departments of Rochester (New York), Tucson (Arizona), Charlotte (North Carolina) and Tampa (Florida).
[8] Even if, according to its developer, E. C. Ratledge, the detection rate of residential burglaries in Baltimore County increased by 2.5% due to REBES,[9] the system use was discontinued.
First, he opposed the hypothesis of the developers of REBES that the system may serve as an example to other target crimes as burglaries are particularly easy to solve for investigators due to the perseverance degree that is shown by offenders.
For Jo Reichertz, the approach by the REBES developers misunderstood the cognitive methods used by burglary experts.