Is it possible to predict whether someone will commit a crime some time in the future?

It sounds like an idea from the 2002 science-fiction movie Minority Report.

But that's what statistical researcher Richard Berk, from the University of Pennsylvania, hopes to find out from work he's carried out this year in Norway.

The Norwegian government collects massive amounts of data about its citizens and associates it with a single identification file.

Berk hopes to crunch the data from the files of children and their parents to see if he can predict from the circumstances of their birth whether a child will commit a crime before their 18th birthday.

The problem here is that newborn babies haven't done anything yet.