If what you describe was the pattern, then the regions with lots of observed "victimless crimes" would be uncorrelated with the regions with lots of serious crimes (e.g. from counting bullet holes down at the morgue, or from ShotSpotter). That's great, this theory makes a testable prediction. It's falsifiable.
That said, I agree that the smart use of such predictions should be sensitive to this. Try to predict where & when the murders will happen, use that to direct patrols (and searches for potential murder weapons). Rather than predicting something simpler like "total number of offences including parking tickets" for the sake of chasing numbers.
(Both of these comments are describing where to put patrols, i.e. where to spend a limited resource to best effect. Prediction applied to human individuals is a very different story, and much scarier.)
> then the regions with lots of observed "victimless crimes" would be uncorrelated with the regions with lots of serious crimes
That doesn't seem like a strong hypothesis I would've made from the given scenario.
For example, one area that's consistent with the theory is that areas with lots of "serious crime" generate a lot of police activity, which turns up a significant amount of "observed victimless crime". That creates an expectation of a positive correlation between "serious crime" and "observed victimless crime".
Then, sure, according to that theory there might also be some areas where policing starts in an area on suspicion rather than serious crime and then we get a lot of "observed victimless crime" without as much "serious crime". That would be a negative correlation that you mentioned.
I just don't think the falsifiable hypothesis you've drawn up is one that the theory actually strongly predicts, and I don't think refuting that hypothesis necessarily refutes the theory.
I'm not saying it's the pattern, I'm saying it's a significant pattern. And I strongly oppose the idea that our law enforcement should be treating any individual based on "patterns" anyway.
That said, I agree that the smart use of such predictions should be sensitive to this. Try to predict where & when the murders will happen, use that to direct patrols (and searches for potential murder weapons). Rather than predicting something simpler like "total number of offences including parking tickets" for the sake of chasing numbers.
(Both of these comments are describing where to put patrols, i.e. where to spend a limited resource to best effect. Prediction applied to human individuals is a very different story, and much scarier.)