Predict and Surveil

Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing

232 pages

English language

Published Feb. 28, 2020 by Oxford University Press, Incorporated.

ISBN:
978-0-19-068409-9
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4 stars (2 reviews)

The scope of criminal justice surveillance, from the police to the prisons, has expanded rapidly in recent decades. At the same time, the use of big data has spread across a range of fields, including finance, politics, health, and marketing. While law enforcement's use of big data is hotly contested, very little is known about how the police actually use it in daily operations and with what consequences.

In Policing Data, Sarah Brayne offers an unprecedented, inside look at how police use big data and new surveillance technologies, leveraging on-the-ground fieldwork with one of the most technologically advanced law enforcement agencies in the world-the Los Angeles Police Department. Drawing on original interviews and ethnographic observations from over two years of fieldwork with the LAPD, Brayne examines the causes and consequences of big data and algorithmic control. She reveals how the police use predictive analytics and new surveillance technologies to deploy …

1 edition

a real view of how police adopt surveillance technology

5 stars

this is a must read if you're interested in policing and surveillance technologies, and how to think about technology adoption within hierarchical and bureaucratic institutions. I think a particularly fascinating focus of this book that isn't as present in other similar ones on the topic is the look at police as workers with their own set of motivations: resistance to deskilling and wanting to be valued for craft, a resistance to surveillance of their own work product, of the role of the police union in resisting surveillance technologies (at least in certain applications) because of fear of loss of agency and power. while highlighting this dynamic, brayne does not fall into the trap of portraying police as mere workers struggling for power under an oppressive management structure (a trap that some leftists still fall into). accurately, there is never a point at which that protection of self-interest is described as …