The harms of algorithmic policing

Professor Rosamunde Van Brakel is a Research Professor at the Law, Science, Technology and Society Research Group of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). She teaches and coordinates the course Legal, Ethical and Social Issues of Artificial Intelligence, and coordinates the VUB Research Chair in Surveillance Studies. She is currently co-PI of the FWO project “FWO Smart Video Surveillance in Smart Cities: Deconstructing Security and Surveillance Discourses”, and of the IBOF project “Future-proofing Human Rights. Developing thicker forms of accountability”.  She is also co-director of the Surveillance Studies Network.

Police departments are increasingly investing in algorithmic systems that predict crimes before they happen, despite the increasing amount of international evidence suggesting that these technologies do not work to prevent crime. The data and algorithms used are riddled with manipulation, error and bias, they are implemented without necessary legal and ethical safeguards, and they are having a negative impact on vulnerable communities and social justice. Within criminology, zemiology offers an interesting starting point for analysing the social harms of algorithmic policing. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari, surveillance studies, science and technology studies, the main aim of this paper is to expand zemiologist insights with a technological and relational focus, and so to broaden the concept of “social harms” to “rhizomatic harms”. By doing this, we aim to open up the discussion and contribute to a new direction of criminological scholarship, which focuses on exploring the impact of new socio-technical systems on criminal justice practices and social justice.

This seminar is part of an open seminar series, hosted by the Centre for Criminology.