Simon Egbert

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices. The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work. Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing.

In diesem Open-Access-Buch wird unter Rückgriff auf einen multimodalen Diskursbegriff das Vorgehen für eine soziotechnisch fundierte Dispositivanalyse entwickelt, die auf die produktive Rolle von Materialität in Diskursen fokussiert. Mit der Frage nach der Stellung von Artefakten in Diskursen werden grundlegende Aspekte der Diskurstheorie und -analytik adressiert, die sich vor allem auf die Bestimmung der Ränder von Diskursen sowie der diskursiven Wirkmächtigkeit von Dingen beziehen. Auf diesem Wege wird eine Diskussion um die passenden konzeptuellen, begrifflichen und methodischen Instrumente diskursanalytischer Studien herausgefordert, zu der dieses Buch einen theoretischen und empirischen Beitrag leistet. Die entwickelte multimodale Dispositivanalyse wird im Rahmen einer qualitativ-empirischen Studie zu Drogentestpraktiken am Arbeitsplatz und im Straßenverkehr exemplarisch umgesetzt. Drogentests werden im Zuge dessen als Diskursaktanten verstanden, die im soziotechnischen Zusammenspiel mit den menschlichen Anwender*innen an der dispositiven Konstruktion von Wirklichkeit wirkmächtig beteiligt sind.

This book explores how predictive policing transforms police work. Police departments around the world have started to use data-driven applications to produce crime forecasts and intervene into the future through targeted prevention measures. Based on three years of field research in Germany and Switzerland, this book provides a theoretically sophisticated and empirically detailed account of how the police produce and act upon criminal futures as part of their everyday work practices. The authors argue that predictive policing must not be analyzed as an isolated technological artifact, but as part of a larger sociotechnical system that is embedded in organizational structures and occupational cultures. The book highlights how, for crime prediction software to come to matter and play a role in more efficient and targeted police work, several translation processes are needed to align human and nonhuman actors across different divisions of police work. Police work is a key function for the production and maintenance of public order, but it can also discriminate, exclude, and violate civil liberties and human rights. When criminal futures come into being in the form of algorithmically produced risk estimates, this can have wide-ranging consequences. Building on empirical findings, the book presents a number of practical recommendations for the prudent use of algorithmic analysis tools in police work that will speak to the protection of civil liberties and human rights as much as they will speak to the professional needs of police organizations. An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, sociology, and cultural studies as well as to police practitioners and civil liberties advocates, in addition to all those who are interested in how to implement reasonable forms of data-driven policing.

Das Buch nimmt eine qualitative Bestandsaufnahme von Drogentestanwendungen in Deutschland vor und fragt dabei nach ihren Kontexten, ihrer Durchführung und ihren Folgen. Von besonderem Interesse ist dabei die Frage nach den spezifischen Intentionen (Anwendungsrationalitäten) der jeweiligen Drogenkonsumkontrollen, die für unterschiedliche soziale Felder – Soziale Arbeit, Schule und Arbeitsplatz – vertiefend untersucht werden. Zugleich werden kontextspezifische und -übergreifende Folgen für die getesteten Individuen und die Wirkungen der Testpraxen auf die Anwendungskontexte selbst beschrieben und analysiert.