{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/detectives-and-criminal-investigators/", "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology", "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.", "scored_at": "2026-08-11", "model": "claude-opus-5", "occupation": { "title": "Detectives and Criminal Investigators", "soc_code": "33-3021", "category": "Protective Service", "us_employment": 114430, "median_annual_wage": 93790 }, "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 69, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 12, "embodiment": 15, "liability_shield": 13, "trust_premium": 12, "judgment_accountability": 17 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "Cellebrite extraction reports, NIBRS-coded incident narratives, subpoenaed bank-record spreadsheets and CDR link charts are already machine-triaged, but nothing yet gets a reluctant witness to change their story on a third doorstep visit or reads a suspect's tell across a table during a Reid-style interview — that split, roughly half desk and half street, is what puts it at 12 rather than 16.", "embodiment": "Detectives clear rooms on warrant service, kneel in the blood spatter to photograph and swab before the scene is released, drive surveillance in traffic, and physically take custody of resisting arrestees in whatever weather and neighborhood the call happens in; it stops short of 18 only because a meaningful share of the shift is spent at a desk building the case file.", "liability_shield": "Peace-officer certification is a statutory prerequisite (POST or state equivalent), your sworn name goes on the warrant affidavit under penalty of perjury, and Section 1983 exposure follows you personally when qualified immunity fails — but the badge is a license to act rather than a professional monopoly on the analytical work, which caps this below the 17-plus range of physicians and attorneys.", "trust_premium": "Confidential informants talk to a specific detective, not to a department, and a prosecutor's willingness to file often rests on which investigator brought the case; it lands at 12 rather than 16 because most victims and witnesses meet whoever is assigned to the case number and have no prior relationship at all.", "judgment_accountability": "You decide on incomplete facts whether probable cause exists, which charge to recommend to the DA, whether to Mirandize now or keep it consensual, and whether to bring in an unstable suspect tonight or hold surveillance — calls that get relitigated at a suppression hearing years later with your name on them and the case dying if you got it wrong." }, "rationale": "The paperwork half of the job — incident narratives, warrant affidavits, records checks, phone-dump and financial-record triage, link analysis — is exactly what AI does well, and agencies are already buying tools for it. But the core of the job is sworn, physical, and adversarial: knocking on doors, interviewing hostile witnesses, working informants, processing scenes, executing arrests, and testifying under cross-examination where a human's credibility and personal accountability are the evidence. Judgment about probable cause and charging recommendations sits with a badge, not a model.", "outlook": "Headcount holds roughly flat while report-writing and records work compresses hard; detectives who become interviewers, informant handlers, and courtroom witnesses gain leverage, and those whose day is mostly paperwork see their caseloads doubled instead of their jobs cut.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Courts and legislatures formalizing that a sworn officer must personally attest, under penalty of perjury, to the factual basis of any AI-drafted warrant affidavit and disclose the tool's involvement — already in motion via King County (WA) prosecutors' 2024 ban on AI-written police reports, Utah SB 180 (2025) requiring disclosure of generative AI in police reports, and California SB 524 (signed 2025) mandating AI-drafted report disclosure plus officer certification of accuracy. If a Brady/Giglio-style disclosure duty attaches to tool use, the sworn signature becomes non-delegable and audit-tracked.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Suppression rulings or consent decrees that treat 'the model flagged it' as failing the independent-judgment requirement for probable cause (the Franks v. Delaware / Aguilar-Spinelli lineage applied to algorithmic tips), forcing a named detective to build and own independent corroboration before charging — as already litigated around facial-recognition-led arrests in Detroit's 2024 ACLU settlement, which requires independent evidence beyond an algorithmic match.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Task-mix shift: this job genuinely has two tiers. If report narratives, phone-dump triage, records checks and link analysis are absorbed by Axon Draft One-type tools and Cellebrite/Magnet analytics, the residual day is interrogation, informant handling, hostile-witness work, scene judgment and cross-examination prep — the tier no current model performs at usable quality. Watch caseload-per-detective ratios rising without narrative-writing hours.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Shift of unit composition toward warrant service, undercover and field-contact work as digital-forensics analysis is centralized into civilian analyst units — meaning the remaining sworn investigator role concentrates the physically unpredictable share. Watch agency reorganizations that move digital forensics to non-sworn analysts.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 }, { "dimension": "trust_premium", "change": "Limited route: private-sector demand for licensed human investigators where a testifying witness is required — insurance SIU and corporate internal investigations contracting ex-detectives specifically because a deposable human is needed. This is a real but small market and does not move public-agency staffing.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 1 } ], "ceiling_note": "Headroom is mostly in liability_shield; trust_premium is near its realistic ceiling since the buyer is a government budget, not a client choosing a human, and budget pressure cuts the other way — agencies adopt these tools to close vacancy gaps, so higher per-detective resistance can coexist with fewer detective positions." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 105350, "wage": 79970 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 103450, "wage": 81920 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 105620, "wage": 83170 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 105980, "wage": 86940 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 107890, "wage": 83640 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 107400, "wage": 86280 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 106730, "wage": 91100 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 110790, "wage": 93580 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 114430, "wage": 93790 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 8.6, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }