Palgrave's Critical Policing Studies

This open access book brings together insights into Pacific policing, conceptualising policing broadly as order maintenance involving the actions of multiple local, regional and international actors with sometimes competing and conflicting agendas. A complex and multifaceted endeavour, scholarship on this topic is relatively scarce and widely dispersed across diverse sources. It examines how Pacific policing is shaped by changing state-society relations in different national contexts and ongoing processes of globalisation. Particular attention is given to the plural character of Pacific policing, profound challenges of gender equity, changing dynamics of crime, and the prominence of transnational policing in resource and capacity constrained domestic environments. The authors draw on examples from across the Pacific islands to provide a nuanced and contextualised account of policing in this socially diverse and rapidly transforming region.

This book explores the policing response to teen sexting – the digital exchange, both consensual and non-consensual, of intimate images among youth peers. With a particular focus in England and Wales, it also considers other international responses and the challenges faced in policing youth practices with legislation being applied beyond its intended scope. It uses the police responses in England and Wales as a case study of the challenges of policy evolving the digital cultural phenomenon and the tensions between enforcing the law, while knowing it’s not fit for purpose, and supporting vulnerable minors. It explores the policy responses that have developed from the problematic legislation and whether these policy interventions have helped or hindered the policing process. It draws in parallels with drugs policy and policing, and brings in progressive, harm reduction approaches in contrast to traditional solutions.

This book provides a cultural investigation of the police in India and how it uses data and algorithmic tools for crime mapping. The book draws on an ethnographic study of Delhi Police's hotspot mapping endeavour. It provides a sociological investigation of the police in India and how they use data and algorithmic tools for crime mapping. It discusses how ‘criminals’ are constructed in these systems, typically, the marginalised residents of slums and immigrant colonies. It explores how the algorithm reifies existing assumptions and prejudices about 'criminals' as artificial intelligence systems are deeply intertwined with the culture and beliefs of those who make and use them. It pays special attention to the discriminatory practices of relevant police officers and how this ‘predictive’ policing perpetuates harm to the most marginalised. This book contributes to discussions around big data and surveillance studies broadly.

This book draws on original research and existing theoretical perspectives and frameworks to critically examine the role of roads policing and its place within the wider field of policing. It looks at the challenges and complexities of doing roads policing and experiencing roads policing from the perspectives of police officers and the public. It uses distracted driving, and more specifically mobile phone use, as an evidence-based case study for a common issue to examine the contribution it makes to collisions, and the challenges of policing it as a driver behaviour. It also discusses broader issues such as the role of roads policing, police legitimacy, the interpretation of law, the interpretation of risk and generating compliance with the law. It speaks to both policing scholars and practitioners, as well as policy makers and road safety organisations.

This volume, the second of a two volume set, offers a rich and unique collection of global perspectives on data-driven predictive technologies and the expansion and use of surveillance apparatuses in policing and intelligence, both public and private. Volume II delves into the epistemologies of data, into the imaginaries of accuracy, and fantasies of technosolutionism, utilizing empirical case studies to interrogate the use of data in policing, while raising questions pertaining to governance, ethics and knowledge construction. The chapters span from exploring the construction of clean and dirty data in private and public policing in South Africa, discussions about facial recognition and technopolitics in Brazil, the construction of intelligence and organizational learning in Norwegian police ethics and broader questions of transparency, data quality, and trust in data-driven policing, to the very topical issues of policing of generative AI and the ways in which both authoritarian and liberal democracies, such as China and India, use biopolitics to turn social welfare into surveillance. Academics and students of criminology, social anthropology, critical algorithm studies, critical sociology, and regional studies, will find this timely volume of interest.

Policing and Intelligence in the Global Big Data Era, Volume I, the first of a two volume set, presents a rich and unique collection of global perspectives on data-driven predictive technologies and the expansion and use of surveillance apparatuses in policing and intelligence, both public and private. Centered around the notion of ‘algorithmic governance’, this volume explores various practices of abstract and intelligence-led policing within the context of surveillance and regulatory capitalism. Each chapter interrogates these concepts as much as realities on the ground as they play out across the globe – from Russia, USA, India, Brazil to Denmark, Germany and Norway. The volume offers a unique insight into the ways in which technologies and data-driven practices – from facial recognition, predictive algorithms, to generative AI – are reshaping cultures of policing both within and beyond police proper. Particular attention is paid to the simultaneous privatization and pluralization policing and intelligence and to the proliferation of new intelligence actors. Academics, students and readers interested in the fields of criminology, social anthropology, critical algorithm.