Description
Book SynopsisPredict and Surveil offers an unprecedented, inside look at how police use big data and new surveillance technologies. Sarah Brayne conducted years of fieldwork with the LAPD--one of the largest and most technically advanced law enforcement agencies in the world-to reveal the unmet promises and very real perils of police use of data--driven surveillance and analytics.
Trade ReviewThe book reads like an encyclopedia of big data policing, supported by extremely rich empirical data in each of the coherently organized eight chapters...Grounded in solid fieldwork, this inspiring book provides far more than a case study of the police use of big data surveillance in LAPD. It provokes us to reflect the relationship among technology, policing, and our society. At a time when big data is increasingly penetrating our daily life, this book serves as a wake up call for those who are obsessed with technological solutions for social problems. Anyone interested in policing, big data, surveillance, criminal justice, and social control will benefit from reading this book. * Chen Shi, Asian Journal of Criminology *
Predict and Surveil draws compellingly on the tools of ethnography to investigate the tools of big data. It reminds readers that data are inherently social and that ignoring the social processes through which data are collected, analyzed, and deployed risks extreme harms. * American Journal of Sociology *
The author got access to observe the Los Angeles Police Department in operation and to see how "predictive policing" that relies on large-scale data collection and analysis actually works in practice. She reports that it opens the door to profiling individuals and neighborhoods, building detailed files on people who are not suspected of a crime, avoiding accountability through the use of outside contractors, increasing bias in sentencing, searching without a warrant, and other backward steps. * World Wide Work *
excellent and timely book * Rachel Ferguson, The Library of Economics and Liberty *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Abbreviations Chapter 1. Introduction: Policing Our Digital Traces Chapter 2. Policing by the Numbers: The Public History and Private Future of Police Data Chapter 3. Dragnet Surveillance: Our Incriminating Lives Chapter 4. Directed Surveillance: Predictive Policing and Quantified Risk Chapter 5. Police Pushback: When the Watcher Becomes the Watched Chapter 6. Coding Inequality: How the Use of Big Data Reduces, Obscures, and Amplifies Inequalities Chapter 7. Algorithmic Suspicion and Big Data: The Inadequacy of Law in the Digital Age Chapter 8. Conclusion: Big Data as Social Appendixes Notes Selected Bibliography Index
