Ethnic profiling is a topic that is challenging to address in policing communities. Many police officers doubt its existence or find it too trivial and irrelevant to worry about. Others may find it important, but do not feel psychologically safe to discuss it with their colleagues. Many police officers, therefore, ignore training and conversations on…
Category: Experts
Mary Frances McGowan: Ohio Overhauls Police Training with Focus on Modern Policing Skills
Ohio will implement the “most comprehensive” police training reform in decades with a new curriculum in July that emphasizes practical skills for today’s law enforcement, State Attorney General Dave Yost announced. The updated Peace Officer Basic Training program will replace 72 hours of outdated coursework with training focused on critical modern policing needs, including active…
Kristin Castner: PanCOPticon: Policing in the Eye of 21 st Century Surveillance Technology
This thesis uses a cumulative view of police theory and methodology as a foundation for an investigation into the role of surveillance technology in a large-scale metropolitan police department. Using Foucault’s notion of panopticism as a guide, original research will show how the use of technological surveillance by police superiors resulted or failed to result…
Alexandra Kerrigan: Swapping Cops for Cameras: Repressive Panopticon or the Future of Policing? A Case Study on Hyderabad’s Government Surveillance
Amid escalating concerns regarding racial justice in recent years, police system reform has emerged as one of the most salient topics in politics. Several competing visions for the future of policing have emerged within the United States—with some cities adopting an abolition approach, others opting to defund their police systems, and many maintaining or increasing…
Esther K. Hong: The Carceral State(s)
The carceral state is everywhere. Legal and social science scholars are increasingly using the carceral state concept to criticize various aspects, or even the entirety, of the United States. But despite how popular and common this term has become in writings about mass incarceration, criminal processes and punishments, and other forms of social control, the…
Victoria Copeland, Alan Dettlaff: How Carceral Violence Persists Through the Surveillance, Punishment, and Regulation of Families
Although conceptualizations of the carceral state have become more expansive in recent years to include systems beyond prisons and policing, the child welfare system has often eluded this conceptualization due to a societal perception that it protects vulnerable children from harm. Despite this, the system has continued to function as a system of social control…
Rita Haverkamp, Frederik Kohler: Who Accepts What During the Crisis? Results From an Online Survey on the Acceptance of COVID-19 Protective Measures (in German)
During the COVID-19 pandemic, government emergency measures restricted fundamental rights to an unprecedented extent. Containing coronavirus infections depended entirely on the willingness of the population to comply with these rules. The acceptance of emergency measures among the population fluctuated. This raises the question of who accepts and complies with such emergency rules and under what…
Roy Bailey: The Сrisis in Policing:
Policing faces an unprecedented crisis. It is important for policy makers to understand fully why we have witnessed such a collapse in public confidence for an organisation that has traditionally enjoyed wide support. The significance of policing in Liberal Democracies like ours cannot be overstated. The ‘thin blue line’, as police officers like to see…
Andrew Lee: AI Police Surveillance Bias – The “Minority Report” Impacting Constitutional Rights
One of my favorite Steven Spielberg movies is the 2002 dystopian thriller Minority Report, in which “precogs” working for the “Precrime” unit predict murders before they happen, allowing arrests for crimes not yet committed. Recently, Pennsylvania attorneys at the Philadelphia Bench-Bar Conference raised an alarm that AI surveillance could soon create such a world –…
Michael Jenkins, Chris Shields: Taking a Principled Approach to AI in Policing
The rapid integration of technology into law enforcement operations, combined with recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), suggests that AI will soon become integral to a wide range of policing technologies. AI is, in fact, already being explored in a range of policing efforts such as crime analysis, body camera video review, and DNA evaluation.1…