Policing, crime and ‘big data’; towards a critique of the moral economy of stochastic governance

Abstract

The paper defines 'stochastic governance' as the governance of populations and territory by reference to the statistical representations of metadata. Stochastic governance aims at achieving social order through algorithmic calculation made actionable through policing and regulatory means. Stochastic governance aims to improve the efficiency and sustainability of populations and territory while reducing costs and resource consumption. The algorithmic administration of populations and territory has recourse to 'Big Data'. The big claim of Big Data is that it will revolutionize the governance of big cities and that, since stochastic governance is data driven, evidence-led and algorithmically analysed, it is based on morally neutral technology. The paper defines moral economy -understood to be the production, distribution, circulation and use of moral sentiments emotions and values, norms and obligations in social space -through which it advances a contribution to the critique of stochastic governance. In essence the argument is that certain technological developments in relation to policing, regulation, law and governance are taking place in the context of a neo-liberal moral economy that is shaping the social outcomes of stochastic governance. Thinking about policing in both the narrow sense of crime fighting and more broadly in its Foucaldian sense as governance, empirical manifestations of 'policing with Big Data' exhibit the hallmarks of the moral economy of neo-liberalism. This suggests that a hardening of the socio-legal and technical structures of stochastic governance has already largely taken place.

Barriers to Digital Transformation in Manufacturing: Development of a Research Agenda

“…The definition and application of standards could lead to safety improvements [52], [54]. Others see the threat by giving access to the own database when common interfaces are used [10], [17], [71]. Creating standards or following existing ones [6] is a question of strategic orientation.…”

“…Creating standards or following existing ones [6] is a question of strategic orientation. The role of open standards is linked to the discussion about property rights in a digital world [69], [71]. Furthermore, new ways of work (e.g., crowd working) need a new judicial background [72].…”

The police intelligence division-of-labour

“…Existing research suggests that the development of RTOCs will likely reinforce organisational pretensions to the rationality of organisational 'chain of command' (Weisburd et al 2003;Mastrofski 2005Mastrofski , 2007McCue 2014). The organisational domination of managerial and business intelligence over the police division-of-labour focuses on the improvement of artificial metrics of police accountability and again raises complex questions about democratic police governance, especially in a period where the economics of policing are dominated by neo-liberal thinking (Sanders and Sheptycki 2016).…”

Automated policing: the case of body-worn video

“…The role of BWV as an investigative tool seems set to grow as algorithms become more adept at sifting through video footage for indexing, searching and triage. The information collected can be categorised by the type of activity or encounter and this can be done spatially, alongside other technologies, to predict crime hotspots (Sanders and Sheptycki, 2017). Linking BWV footage to face and voice recognition expands the capacity for it to be used to identify suspects.…”