Policing & Technology

van Brakel Rosamunde, De Hert Paul (2011) Policing, surveillance and law in a pre-crime society: Understanding the consequences of technology based strategies. Journal of Police Studies, issue 20, vol.20, n. 3, pp.163 - 192, published by Maklu.

by Rosamunde van Brakel

The last decades have seen several trends emerging in policing, the policing landscape has become fragmented,... more The last decades have seen several trends emerging in policing, the policing landscape has become fragmented, (surveillance) technology is starting to play an increasingly important role in policing practices and recently new police models are more and more geared to predicting what will happen in the future. A first goal of this article is to explore new developments in policing and more specifically the focus will be on the huge expansion of the use of surveillance technologies by police, and the growing belief amongst both policy makers and police that it is possible, to a certain extent, by using surveillance technology to predict crime before it happens. A second goal is to explore a number of important unintended consequences that arise as a result of what we will call ‘preemptive policing’.
For this exploration the article draws from several disciplines; it reviews literature on policing, but will also venture into surveillance studies and science and technology studies. The goal of this contribution is not to present empirical data to test the literature but to discuss certain unintended consequences that are raised by preemptive policing and to critically analyse how European law deals with these consequences through a discussion of several judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. For our exploration Garland’s much cited theory of the ‘culture of control’ is used as a theoretical backdrop to contextualize the trends in policing that have led to the emergence of pre-emptive policing. The article shows the fundamental importance of taking into account social and legal issues arising when deciding upon the deployment of new surveillance technologies by police and that proportionality, transparency, non-discrimination and due process need to take centre stage in the development of new police models

Infrared Beacons: Applications for Law Enforcement

by Ross Wolf

Mesloh, C., Wolf, R., & Medley, L. (2011).  Infrared beacons: Applications for law enforcement.  Law Enforcement Executive Forum, 11(3), 107-116.

Law enforcement officers working in various nighttime and daytime conditions often encounter a significant number of... more Law enforcement officers working in various nighttime and daytime conditions often encounter a significant number of safety issues. Officers frequently become involved in foot chases and/or pursuits and may become difficult to locate, particularly if they have been incapacitated or are injured. Specialized units such as SWAT and K9 are at increased risk as target identification may be difficult, leading to the potential for friendly fire incidents. An additional problem faced by law enforcement agencies is the tracking of their patrol officers and officers in other assignments once they leave their motor vehicles. Officers may, in the heat of the moment, exit their vehicles in pursuit of a suspect without communicating an updated location on the radio. An officer in a foot pursuit could travel hundreds of yards away from his or her vehicle before the first back-up unit arrives, even farther in rural areas where back-up may take a longer time. Consequently, if the officer is incapacitated, he or she may be difficult to locate, particularly in nighttime or low- level light conditions. This is not an infrequently occurring event; according to the Uniform Crime Reports, 57,546 (12%) law enforcement officers were injured in 2005, and the largest number of officers tended to be injured in the line of duty between the hours of midnight and 2:00 am (Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 2005).This current study examines the potential uses of existing IR and strobe technologies that individual officers and agencies could adopt and incorporate onto the duty uniform. The study utilized various methods to discern whether IR technology would make the officer identifiable at a substantial distance and would be effective at tracking officers engaged in foot pursuits and perimeter searches in urban and rural environments.

‘Nothing to Hide … Nothing to Fear’: Discriminatory Surveillance and Queer Visibility in Great Britain and Northern Ireland

by Kathryn Conrad

Pre-publication final draft.  Final essay published in Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory, ed. Noreen Giffney and Michael O’Rourke. Surrey, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, 2009.

This chapter will ‘queer’ surveillance, interrogate the assumptions on which it is based and consider the uses to... more This chapter will ‘queer’ surveillance, interrogate the assumptions on which it is based and consider the uses to which it is put, by examining surveillance and policing practices in both the United Kingdom generally and, more specifically, in Northern Ireland, particularly as they have been directed at queer people. In the human crises engendered by surveillance, I will suggest, we also see a crisis in the meanings and value of the public, privacy, visibility and normalisation, issues that have long resonated with queer theory and queer studies.

What can we learn about collective security from looking at the experience of Manchuria

by Pasha Shahini

Redone 3 times last week,

Police Surveillance and the Emergence of CCTV In the 1960s

by Chris A Williams

Policing is a Technology of War: Discuss

by Pasha Shahini

Draft Only, need 500 more words