Critical Perspectives on Predictive Policing

Taking a critical approach, this book advances understanding of the social, legal and ethical aspects of digitalisation in law enforcement and the reliance on data-driven tools to predict and prevent crime. It shows how the proliferation of data analytics challenges citizens’ rights, at a time when what counts as ‘safety’ or ‘policing’ is being fundamentally transformed.

Expert contributors examine data driven policing infrastructures across Europe from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, showing how its day-to-day application differs from intended aims, and the consequences of this. With ethnographic case studies from border to traffic control, and from facial recognition to essentially automated data analytics, the authors argue that predictive policing is shaped not only by technology, but also by the imaginaries, policy, power, interest and resistance within policing agencies.

Offering a critical perspective on this topical subject, Critical Perspectives on Predictive Policing is an excellent resource for scholars in critical criminology, critical geography, science and technology studies, and digital and urban studies.

Edited by Vasilis Galis, Professor in Science and Technology Studies, Technologies in Practice section, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Helene O.I. Gundhus, Professor, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo, Norway and Antonis Vradis, Reader, School of Geography and Sustainable Development, University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK