Résumés
Abstract
Predictive and data-driven policing systems continue to proliferate around the world, enticing police forces with promises of improvements in efficiency and the ability to offer various ways of addressing the future to pre-empt, predict, or prevent crime. As more of these systems become operationalised in England and Wales, this paper takes up Duarte’s (2021) observation that there is a lack of description as to what such systems actually are. This paper adapts a social network methodology to explore what is a data-driven policing system. Using a police force in England, UK, as a case study, we provide a visualisation of a data-driven policing system based on the data flows it requires to operate. The paper shows how a disparate network of affiliate organisations act as collators of specific data types that are then used in a range of policing applications. We make visible how data travels from its source through various nodes and the various potential points of translation that occur. We show, as others have argued before us, the data points used are proxies for poverty, making certain groups and sections of society highly visible to the digital system whilst other groups and crimes become less visible—and sometimes even hidden.
Keywords:
- predictive policing of poverty,
- data-driven policing,
- visualizing data flows,
- visibility,
- United Kingdom
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Amoore, Louise. 2011. Data Derivatives: On the Emergence of a Security Risk Calculus for Our Times. Theory, Culture & Society 28 (6): 24–43.
- Amoore, Louise, and Rita Raley. 2016. Securing with Algorithms: Knowledge, Decision, Sovereignty. Security Dialogue 48 (1): 24–43.
- Andrejevic, Mark. 2017. To Pre-Empt A Thief. International Journal of Communication 11: 879–896.
- Andrejevic, Mark, Lina Dencik, and Emiliano Treré. 2020. From Pre-Emption to Slowness: Assessing the Contrasting Temporalities of Data-Driven Predictive Policing. New Media & Society 22 (9): 1528–1544.
- Aradau, Claudia, and Tobias Blanke. 2017. Politics of Prediction: Security and the Time/Space of Governmentality in the Age of Big Data. European Journal of Social Theory 20 (3): 373–391.
- Avon and Somerset Police and Crime Commissioner. 2019. Serious Violence Strategic Needs Assessment. https://www.avonandsomerset-pcc.gov.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2021/09/FINAL-AS-SNA-Redacted.pdf.
- Avon and Somerset Police and Crime Commissioner. 2021. Avon and Somerset Violence Reduction Unit: Annual Report 2020/21. https://www.avonandsomerset-pcc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/VRU_Annual_Report_Jan_2020.pdf.
- Barocas, Solon, and Andrew D. Selbst. 2016. Big Data’s Disparate Impact. SSRN Electronic Journal, September 30. https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2477899.
- BBC News. 2018. Kent Police Stop Using Crime Predicting Software. November 26. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-kent-46345717 [accessed June 18, 2022].
- Behavioural Insights Team, The. 2019. Developing a Serious Violence Strategy for Avon and Somerset. https://www.avonandsomerset-pcc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Developing-serious-violence-strategy-avon-somerset-min.pdf.
- Bell, Emma. 2013. Punishment as Politics: The Penal System in England and Wales. In Punishment in Europe: A Critical Anatomy of Penal Systems, edited by Vincenzo Ruggiero and Mick Ryan, 55–85. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Benbouzid, Bilel. 2019. To Predict and to Manage: Predictive Policing in the United States. Big Data & Society 6 (1): https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719861703.
- Bennett Moses, Lyria, and Janet Chan. 2014. Using Big Data for Legal and Law Enforcement Decisions: Testing the New Tools. UNSW Law Journal 37 (2): 643–678.
- Bowker, Geoffrey C., Karen Baker, Florence Millerand, and David Ribes. 2010. Toward Information Infrastructure Studies: Ways of Knowing in Networked Environment. In International Handbook of Internet Research, edited by Jeremy Hunsinger, Lisbeth Kastrup, and Matthew Allen, 97–117. London: Springer.
- boyd, danah, and Kate Crawford. 2012. Critical Questions for Big Data: Provocations for a Cultural, Technological, and Scholarly Phenomenon. Information, Communication & Society 15 (5): 662–679.
- Brayne, Sarah. 2017. Big Data Surveillance: The Case of Policing. American Sociological Review 82 (5): 977–1008.
- Brayne, Sarah. 2021. Predict and Surveil: Data Discretion, and the Future of Policing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Brayne, Sarah, and Angèle Christin. 2020. Technologies of Crime Prediction: The Reception of Algorithms in Policing and Criminal Courts. Social Problems 68 (3): 608–624.
- Bristol City Council. 2025. Information Sharing Agreement 02/15. https://www.bristol.gov.uk/files/documents/1395-bcc-police-think-family-tier-2/file [accessed March 31].
- Chander, Anupam. 2017. The Racist Algorithm? Michigan Law Review 115: 1023–1045.
- City of Chicago. 2016. Strategic Subject List - Dashboard. https://data.cityofchicago.org/Public-Safety/Strategic-Subject-List-Dashboard/wgnt-sjgb [accessed July 2, 2022].
- Coleman, Clive, and Jenny Moynihan. 2010. Understanding Crime Data: Haunted by the Dark Figure. Croydon, UK: Open University Press.
- Couchman, H. 2019. Policing by Machine: Predictive Policing and the Threat to Our Rights. I.IBERTY, January. https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/LIB-11-Predictive-Policing-Report-WEB.pdf.
- Crawford, Kate. 2021. Atlas of A.I.: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
- Day, Ronald E. 2014. Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
- Deleuze, Gilles. 1992. Post Script on Societies of Control. October 59 (Winter): 3–7.
- Dencik, Lina, Arne Hintz, Joanna Redden, and Harry Warne. 2018. Data Scores as Governance: Investigating Uses of Citizen Scoring in Public Services. Data Justice Lab, December. https://datajustice.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/data-scores-as-governance-project-report2.pdf.
- Dencik, Lina, Joanna Redden, Arne Hintz, and Harry Warne. 2019. The “Golden View”: Data-Driven Governance in the Scoring Society. Internet Policy Review 8 (2): https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.2.1413.
- Dowey, Jonathan. 2018. How Avon and Somerset Combines Data and Experience for Better Police Work. Upshot by Influitive. https://upshotstories.com/stories/how-avon-and-somerset-combines-data-and-experience-for-better-police-work [accessed January 3, 2022].
- Duarte, Daniel Edler. 2021. The Making of Crime Predictions: Sociotechnical Assemblages and the Controversies of Governing Future Crime. Surveillance & Society 19 (2): 199–215.
- Eaton, Michelle, and Camilla Bertoncin. 2018. State of Offices of Data Analytics (ODA) in the UK. Nesta. https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/State_of_Offices_of_Data_Analytics_ODA_in_the_UK_WEB_v5.pdf.
- Egbert, Simon. 2019. Predictive Policing and the Platformization of Police Work. Surveillance & Society 17 (1/2): 83–88.
- Egbert, Simon, and Susanne Krasmann. 2020. Predictive Policing: Not Yet, but Soon Preemptive? Policing and Society 30 (8): 905–919.
- Egbert, Simon, and Matthias Leese. 2021. Criminal Futures: Predictive Policing and Everyday Police Work. London: Routledge.
- Ensign, Danielle, Sorelle A Friedler, Scott Neville, Carlos Scheidegger, and Suresh Venkatasubramanian. 2018. Runaway Feedback Loops in Predictive Policing. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 81(1): 1–12.
- Ericson, Ricard V., and Kevin D. Haggerty. 1997. Policing the Risk Society. Toronoto, CA: University of Toronto Press.
- Eubanks, Virginia. 2018. Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
- Families in Focus. 2018. Families in Focus Operational Guidance V2. https://www.proceduresonline.com/bristol/cs/user_controlled_lcms_area/uploaded_files/Families in Focus Operational Guidance v2.pdf.
- Ferguson, Andrew Guthrie. 2012. Predictive Policing and Reasonable Suspicion. Emory Law Journal 62 (2): 261–325.
- Ferguson, Andrew Guthrie. 2015. Big Data and Predictive Reasonable Suspicion. University of Pennsylvania Law Review 163 (2): 327–410.
- Ferguson, Andrew Guthrie. 2017a. Policing Predictive Policing. Washington University Law Review 94 (5): 1109–1189.
- Ferguson, Andrew Guthrie. 2017b. The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement. New York: New York University Press.
- Haggerty, Kevin D., and Richard V. Ericson. 2000. The Surveillant Assemblage. The British Journal of Sociology 51 (4): 605–622.
- Hälterlein, Jens. 2021. Epistemologies of Predictive Policing: Mathematical Social Science, Social Physics and Machine Learning. Big Data & Society 8 (1): https://doi.org/10.1177/20539517211003118.
- Harcourt, Bernard E. 2007. Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
- Hillyard, Paddy, and Steve Tombs. 2017. Social Harm and Zemiology. In The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, edited by Alison Liebling, Shadd Maruna, and Lesley McAra, 6th edition, 284–305. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Holmqvist, Caroline. 2013. Undoing War: War Ontologies and the Materiality of Drone Warfare. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 41 (3): 535–552.
- Home Office. 2016. Social Network Analysis: “How to Guide.” https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a819b0640f0b62305b8fdb6/socnet_howto.pdf [accessed October 20, 2022].
- Independent Inquiry Child Sexual Abuse. N.d. Official Documentation ASP000279_006. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20221215012028/https://www.iicsa.org.uk/key-documents/23441/view/ASP000279_006-007-010-012-018-019.pdf.
- Insight Bristol. N.d.a. Think Family Data Process Map. https://www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/20182/34776/Think+Family+Data+Process+Map/c9a4c8f9-04a5-5655-346c-1470f83f1d1d [accessed July 8, 2022].
- Insight Bristol. N.d.b. Legal Gateways. https://www.bristol.gov.uk/documents/20182/34776/Bristol+City+Council+Think+Family+Legal+Gateways.pdf/9dee4fa5-fb11-48c2-b08a-4fcdd4baad2a [accessed July 8, 2022].
- Jansen, Fieke. 2018. Data Driven Policing in the Context of Europe. Data Justice Lab. Cardiff, UK: Cardiff University. https://datajusticeproject.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Report-Data-Driven-Policing-EU.pdf.
- Joh, Elizabeth E. 2015. The New Surveillance Discretion: Automated Suspicion, Big Data, and Policing. Harvard Law & Policy Review 10: 15–42.
- Joint Committee on Human Rights. 2020. Black People, Racism and Human Rights. Eleventh Report of Session 2019–21. HC559. https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/3376/documents/32359/default/ [accessed May 20, 2022].
- Lammerant, Hans, and Paul de Hert. 2016. Predictive Profiling and Its Legal Limits. In Exploring the Boundaries of Big Data, Volume 32, edited by Bart Sloot, Dennis Broeders, and Erik Schrijvers, 145–173. Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press.
- Linder, Thomas. 2019. Surveillance Capitalism and Platform Policing: The Surveillant Assemblage-as-a-Service. Surveillance & Society 17 (1/2): 76–82.
- Lum, Kristian, and William Isaac. 2016. To Predict and Serve? Significance 13 (5): 14–19.
- Lyon, David. 2014. Surveillance, Snowden, and Big Data: Capacities, Consequences, Critique. Big Data & Society 1 (2): https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714541861.
- Magalhães, João Carlos. 2018. Do Algorithms Shape Character? Considering Algorithmic Ethical Subjectivation. Social Media + Society 4 (2): https://doi.org/10.1177/2056305118768301.
- Maguire, Mike. 2012. Criminal Statistics and the Construction of Crime. In The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, edited by Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Robert Reiner, 5th edition, 206–244. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- Mann, Monique, and Tobias Matzner. 2019. Challenging Algorithmic Profiling: The Limits of Data Protection and Anti-Discrimination in Responding to Emergent Discrimination. Big Data & Society 6 (2): https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719895805.
- Mantello, Peter. 2016. The Machine That Ate Bad People: The Ontopolitics of the Precrime Assemblage. Big Data & Society 3 (2): 1–11.
- Marsh, Andy, and Sean Price. 2020. Inphinity: Pushing the Boundaries︱Sean Price & Andy Marsh. Inphinity, video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEQVSHviIEo [accessed July 3, 2022].
- Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor, and Kenneth Cukier. 2013. Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
- McCulloch, Jude, and Dean Wilson. 2016. Pre-Crime: Pre-Emption, Precaution, and the Future. New York: Routledge.
- Mehozay, Yoav, and Eran Fisher. 2019. The Epistemology of Algorithmic Risk Assessment and the Path towards a Non-Penology Penology. Punishment & Society 21 (5): 523–541.
- Meijer, Albert, and Martijn Wessels. 2019. Predictive Policing: Review of Benefits and Drawbacks. Internation Journal of Public Administration 42 (12): 1031–1039.
- Minority Report. 2002. Steven Spielberg, dir. 20th Century Fox.
- Nelken, David. 2012. White-Collar and Corporate Crime. In The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, edited by Mike Maguire, Rod Morgan, and Robert Reiner, 5th edition, 623–659. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
- O’Malley, By Pat. 2015. Revisiting the Classics: “Policing the Risk Society” in the Twenty-First Century. Policing and Society 25 (4): 426–431.
- O’Neil, Kathy. 2017. Weapons of Math Destruction. London: Penguin Random House UK.
- Oswald, Marion, Jamie Grace, Sheena Urwin, and Geoffrey C. Barnes. 2018. Algorithmic Risk Assessment Policing Models: Lessons from the Durham HART Model and “Experimental” Proportionality. Information & Communications Technology 27 (2): 232–250.
- Pasquale, Frank. 2015. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That Control Money and Information. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
- Pezzani, Lorenzo, and Charles Heller. 2013. A Disobedient Gaze: Strategic Interventions in the Knowledge(s) of Maritime Borders. Postcolonial Studies 16 (3): 289–298.
- Plantin, Jean-Christophe, Carl Lagoze, Paul N Edwards, and Christian Sandvig. 2018. Infrastructure Studies Meet Platform Studies in the Age of Google and Facebook. New Media & Society 20 (1): 293–310.
- Qlik. 2018. Avon and Somerset Constabulary. Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBvQUI83lfQ [accessed June 6, 2021].
- QlikTech International AB. 2017. UK Police Force Visualizes Incident and Operations Data to Fight Crime Faster and Improve Public Safety. Qlik, January 11. https://www.qlik.com/us/company/press-room/press-releases/0111-police-force-visualizes-incident-operations-data-fight-crime-faster-improve-public-safety [accessed June 6, 2021].
- QlikTech International AB. 2021. Data Analytics Underpins 80% of UK Police Forces’ Response to Covid-19. Qlik, May 13. https://www.qlik.com/us/company/press-room/press-releases/data-analytics-underpins-80-percent-uk-police-response-to-covid19 [accessed June 6, 2021].
- QlikTech International AB. 2023. About Qlik: Our Vision for a Data-Literate World. Qlik. https://www.qlik.com/us/company [accessed March 28].
- QlikTech International AB. N.d.a. Watch Qlik Sense Demo. Qlik. https://www.qlik.com/us/forms/success/demo/qlik-sense/thank-you [accessed June 10, 2021].
- QlikTech International AB. N.d.b. Qlik Sense | Modern Cloud Analytics. Qlik. https://www.qlik.com/us/products/qlik-sense [accessed June 10, 2021].
- Richardson, Rashida, Jason M Schultz, and Kate Crawford. 2019. Dirty Data, Bad Predictions: How Civil Rights Violations Impact Police Data, Predictive Policing Systems, and Justice. New York University Law Review 94 (15): 15–55.
- Royal United Services Institute. 2020. Data Analytics and Algorithms in Policing in England and Wales: Towards a New Policy Framework. https://rusieurope.eu/sites/default/files/rusi_pub_165_2020_01_algorithmic_policing_babuta_final_web_copy.pdf.
- Schinkel, Willem. 2011. Prepression: The Actuarial Archive and New Technologies of Security. Theoretical Criminology 15 (4): 365–380.
- Smith, John. 2017. Letter from Avon and Somerset Constabulary and Crime Commissioner to Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service. September 29. https://fireauthority.dsfire.gov.uk/documents/s1785/Annex%20A%20to%20Report%20DSFRA1731.pdf.
- Uchida, Craig D. 2009. Predictive Policing. In Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice, edited by Gerben Bruinsma and David Weisburd, 3871–3880. New York: Springer.
- Weber, Cynthia. 2007. Securitizing the Unconscious: The Bush Doctrine of Preemption and Minority Report. In The Logics of Biopower and the War on Terror, edited by Elizabeth Dauphinee and Cristina Masters, 109–127. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
- West Midlands Police. 2019. Ethics Committee Briefing Note. Project Reference DAL_2018_0001_IOM Model. https://www.westmidlands-pcc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Ethics-Committee-03042019-IOM-MODEL.pdf?x48248.
- West Midlands Police. 2020. Ethics Committee: National Data Analytics Solution Submission to WMP Ethics Committee, March 2020. https://www.westmidlands-pcc.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/26032020-EC-Item-1-NDAS-Update.pdf?x41638.
- Whyte, David, and Steve Tombs. 2005. From the Streets to the Suites: Researching Corporate Crime. Crime and Justice Magazine 62 (June): 24–26.
- Wilson, Dean. 2018. Algorithmic Patrol: The Future of Predictive Policing. In Big Data, Crime and Social Control, edited by Aleš Završnik, 108–127. London: Routledge.
- Wilson, Dean. 2019. Platform Policing and the Real-Time Cop. Surveillance & Society 17 (1/2): 69–75.
- Wilson, Dean. 2020. Predictive Policing Management: A Brief History of Patrol Automation. New Formations 98: 139–155.
- Wilson, Dean, and Leanne Weber. 2008. Surveillance, Risk and Preemption on the Australian Border. Surveillance & Society 5 (2): 124–141.
- Young, Jock. 2003. To These Wet and Windy Shores: Recent Immigration Policy in the UK. Punishment & Society 5 (4): 449–462.
- Završnik, Aleš. 2019. Algorithmic Justice: Algorithms and Big Data in Criminal Justice Settings. European Journal of Criminology 18 (5): 623–642.
- Zedner, Lucia. 2007. Pre-Crime and Post-Criminology? Theoretical Criminology 11 (2): 261–281.
- Zilka, Miri, Lawrence Cartwright, and Adrian Weller. 2021. Parliamentary Committee Written Evidence NTL0040. https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/39076/html/ [accessed February 23, 2022].
- Zilka, Miri, Holli Sargeant, and Adrian Weller. 2022. Transparency. Governance and Regulation of Algorithmic Tools Deployed in the Criminal Justice System: A UK Case Study. In Proceedings of the 2022 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES’22), Oxford, UK, May 19–21, 1–3. New York: Association for Computing Machinary.
- Zuboff, Shoshana. 2019. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. London: Profile Books Ltd.